


Future Imperfect

by Narsil



Series: A New Future [3]
Category: Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Continuation, Crossover, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Ranma-chan, Retrotech
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-22 22:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 91,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narsil/pseuds/Narsil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a month since the Confederacy's invasion was beaten back, and it's finally time to take Chibi-Usa home and pick up Luna and Artemis. Of course, it's never that simple....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pride of Man

  * **1943:** The U.S. Department of the Navy decides against funding the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) project.
  * **1945:** Budget issues and a management crisis at Bell Labs derail work into improved telecommunication switches. The transistor is never invented.
  * **1956-1964:** Humanity struggles to reach the stars, but both Soviet and American efforts to launch and sustain artificial satellites fail. No rocket design proves capable of carrying itself to orbit. The first primitive general-purpose computers appear to help solve rocketry problems, but they cannot fulfill the requirements of the space program.
  * **1998:** The “euro” becomes the official currency of the European Union, except in the U.K.
  * **2001:** Islamist terrorists fly hijacked airliners into the World Trade towers, the Pentagon.
  * **2005:** Claiming economic and security concerns, the European Union annexes the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, and Vojvodina, creating a protectorate. Russian protests are ineffectual.
  * **2009:** European Union annexes Balkan nations, when the UN declines to take effective action the US withdraws from the UN, orders it out of the country. Ranma is frozen in girl-form, gains protection from magical influence, and remembers a past life as Princess Usagi’s little sister while resisting Happosai’s final attack, leaves dojo with Akane. An interdimensional invasion is repelled by the combined efforts of the Senshi, the Nerima Wrecking Crew, the Chinese Amazons and the Japanese Defense Force.



 

* * *

Akane ignored the drying bloodstains soaked into her red, white and blue costume — uniform. She was too busy staring at the block of pseudo-Roman soldiers marching straight at her. Almost a hundred soldiers.

Tearing her eyes away from the enemy formation, her gaze fell on Kuno, drawn katana in a hand whitening with the strength of his grip, eagerness in every line, eyes begging for the word that would send him charging to his death.

_Say it._

Tearing her eyes from the young man she’d hated more than any other, she looked across the battlefield at the Senshi gathered around a pillar, fire and ice contesting for supremacy from opposite sides with the crystalline column caught in the middle. There lay safety, her task done, she could leave the portal to the enemy. But the portal ...

Her shifted shifted again, to focus on the shimmering gray circle hanging in the air, where her lover fought her own battle. Unwillingly, her eyes dropped to where its base touched the ground, and the river of blood running out of the doorway to form a rapidly spreading pool on the ground.

_Say it!_

“My Lady, should I charge?”

The youngest Tendo again looked up at the true samurai, his face alight with need, then past him to the still approaching formation. It was closer, now — much closer — and coming at a trot.

She opened her mouth to give the order, but the words stuck in her throat, she couldn’t force them through, couldn’t breathe....

_SAY IT!_

And she jerked awake as her lover’s elbow slammed into a breast. Eyes instantly wide open, she looked around wildly to find herself in their massive bed, their suite in the mini-palace at Nikko almost a new world in the shadows cast by the faint light of deep night coming through the windows, the luxury covered by dark shadows.

Beside her, Ranma was twisting, almost flailing, crying for someone to go back, to run away.

Sighing, Akane, twisted onto her side to gently pull the once and present princess against her. “Shhh, it’s all right, it’s over, I’m here,” she whispered in Ranma’s ear over and over, until redhead finally relaxed and snuggled up against her.

 _Aren’t we a pair?_ Akane thought, looking out the window at the stars as she listened to Ranma’s quiet breathing. _A month, and we’re both still dreaming about it. At least Ranma doesn’t know about my nightmares, I think — not as deep a sleeper as_ she _is. Maybe the change of scenery when we go back to Tokyo tomorrow — today — will help, once we get through the family dinner, and visit Yuka and Sayuri on Sunday before returning to the apartment. It’ll be good to see Usa and Hotaru again, talking on the phone just isn’t enough. Though living with Nabiki and going back to school is going to seem odd, after getting treated like royalty for a couple months. Not that Ranma won’t be happy to get away from all this. Me too, I think._

Gently kissing her lover on the cheek, the raven-haired girl drifted off to sleep with a smile on her face, to thoughts of teachers and classes, ice cream parlors and Sayuri and Yuka mixed together with Hotaru and Usa.

/oOo\

Akane looked around the comfortably familiar family room of what was no longer home, at the extended family sitting around the larger table that had been brought in for the occasion. Inside her, something relaxed. However angry she had been — and still was — she had missed this.

To Akane’s right, Ranma was talking to Akane’s father and Doc Tofu, discussing what she had learned in her drive to create ki attacks not charged by emotions, and her worries about how easy it was once someone learned how to sense their internal ki.

To Akane’s left, Nodoka, Nabiki and Kasumi were discussing the finances for a wedding ceremony, and if it would be possible to hold it early enough that Kasumi’s pregnancy wouldn’t be showing.

And across the table from her ...

“I’m glad you’re coming back to Tokyo for the Autumn school term,” her former teacher said, “I never trusted those Amazons — delinquents, the lot of them, invading the school, disturbing classes ... I’m a little surprised that you two spent the last month out there.”

“Ranma didn’t feel like she had a choice, what with the casualties they took in the fight. And with the enemy soldiers left behind being moved close by while being taught about their new home, she wanted to be there in case they did something stupid,” Akane replied, shrugging. “And where she goes, I go.”

“I see.” Hinako frowned at her former student. “I understand the two of you are sharing a room. You and Ranma haven’t been ... delinquents, have you?” she demanded sternly.

Akane hurriedly shook her head even as a furious blush lit up her face. “No, ma’m!” she squeaked.

“Really? I find that hard to believe ... which means you’re treating each other right.”

“But with Ranma’s curse gone, we don’t —” _What?_ Akane paused, running Hinako’s last bit back again. _Oh._ Beside her, Ranma relaxed with a chuckle (giggle) and turned back to her conversation as Hinako giggled.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” Hinako apologized after fighting her giggles under control. “Even if I was still capable of a five yen kill, I wouldn’t have used it on you — even if I thought you were misbehaving, you aren’t my students any longer.”

Akane stiffened. “You can’t? I knew you were stuck in your adult form, but ...”

But Hinako was shaking her head even as Ranma broke off talking again to listen in. “I’m not ‘stuck’ in my adult form,” Hinako corrected. “Like Ranma, the doctors tell me I’m a perfectly healthy young woman, and Tofu” — smiling at the young doctor — “tells me that whatever Hap ... whatever was done to me is gone. His best guess is that when I overcharged to the point of exploding, it obliterated Hap ... the alterations to my ki.”

“Ya can say the Freak’s name, it’s just a word,” Ranma said, ignoring the way she had tightened up even as a concerned Akane reached up to gently squeeze her lover’s shoulder. “But ya had health problems when the Freak saved yer life, didn’t ya? None a’ that comin’ back?”

“No, nothing. Like I said, I’m perfectly healthy,” Hinako assured them. “I simply can’t drain ki now, or project it.”

“But can ya sense it?” Ranma asked intently.

Hinako frowned thoughtfully. “Yes, I can. Is this important?”

Ranma shrugged. “From what I’ve been learnin’ ... maybe. I’ll be wantin’ ta talk ta you an’ Tendo-san later.” She fell silent for a moment, then asked, “D’ya miss it — bein’ able ta turn into a kid?”

“I miss the freedom that came with my child form, the uncomplicated worldview, and cuddling up with Soun,” the tall brunette mused. “But overall — no, I don’t miss the mood swings from hormone overloads, being considered a freak, or being treated like a little child when I had decades of experience. And then there was the way it complicated things for me and Soun, kept him from reopening the dojo, and especially the way we couldn’t get married. Now, all that’s gone, Soun will be restarting classes, and I can finally accept his offer of marriage without worrying about how it’ll look. And with some luck, we’ll soon have a little one of our own to cuddle.”

“You’re getting married?” Kasumi broke in to ask. Hinako nodded, and the entire table stared at the normally calm, collected young woman’s squee of delight. “Oh, we _must_ make it a joint ceremony! When did you want to do it? Do you want a traditional ceremony or a Western one? Who did you want to invite? I know it’s only been a month, but you aren’t pregnant ... ?”

/oOo\

Setsuna twitched at the sound of her alarm clock going off. Not that the Senshi of Time had needed its help, she had spent the last few hours staring up into the dark. And her infallible time sense knew exactly what time it was — 2:05 a.m., Saturday, the twelfth of September, Anno Domini two thousand and nine. And it was time.

Sighing, the emerald-haired woman sat up in her bed, rubbed her weary eyes, then rose and without bothering to change out of her lingerie transformed into her black and white Senshi uniform. Garnet Staff in hand, she _stepped_ to the Time Gates.

For a few minutes, she simply stood in the mists that drifted around the massive gates, watching the flickering random images flash across the doors, before finally steeling herself. Raising her staff, she froze the images, and moments later this scene shifted to a seacoast city, a dark glass skyscraper dominating a wavy line of smaller skyscrapers running from the river that cut through the city. Boston, 11:58:37 a.m., Eastern Standard Time.

Taking a deep breath, she set the scene into motion, and exactly fifteen seconds later a flash of light dawned in the middle of the skyscrapers, obliterating them in an instant in a fireball hundreds of yards across. The fireball died in seconds, replaced by a shockwave of smoke and dust racing outward in all directions, effortlessly sweeping away buildings close to the blast, turning windows and glass doorways into slashing shrapnel farther out. In the center of the devastation, the mushroom cloud of hot ash and smoke familiar to schoolchildren for over sixty years rose above the city. The fires that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki had come for the birthplace of the American Revolution.

The scene reached the point in time that Pluto had appeared before the Time Gates and froze. For long minutes she simply stared at the frozen image, face hard. Eventually, she reset the scene: 10:58: 42 a.m., Central Standard Time, the Gateway Arch, St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi; 8:59:50 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco on the Pacific coast; 5:01:39 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time, Big Ben in the heart of London. In each scene, she watched as the same fires devoured the heart of the city.

When the dark mushroom cloud spreading over London froze, she gazed at it for long shuddering breath after long, shuddering breath, before finally releasing the image, turning away as the Time Gates reverted to the flickering random images of before. She _stepped_ away.

/\

Pluto appeared outside the gates of a former Buddhist temple in the city of Nekomi. Waiting at the gate was a breathtakingly beautiful brown-haired apparently young woman in flowing robes, the elongated diamond mark between her eyes and triangles on each cheek glowing faintly in the night, an aura of pure peace seeming to radiate out from her to sink into Pluto’s tortured soul.

“You know, of course,” Pluto said, her shaking voice harsh.

Belldandy nodded, reaching out a hand. “Yes, I do,” she replied.

Pluto took the offered hand and allowed the goddess to pull her through the gate onto the grounds, where Belldandy led her over to a wide cushioned swing seat off to the side of the central building, underneath a large tree. The goddess sat at one end, and Pluto jabbed the Garnet Staff deep into the ground and left it standing upright where it was impaled before joining her friend.

As soon as the fuku-clad woman was seated, Belldandy pulled her friend’s head down against her shoulder, murmuring comfort. Pluto felt the other arm circle her waist and clutched at her friend as her body began to shake. Slowly over long minutes, the tremors eased and eventually vanished.

Finally, when she could trust her voice, she let go of her friend and sat up. “Thank you, as always,” she whispered.

“As always, no thanks is necessary, it is what I live for,” Belldandy replied. “But you are very welcome, and always welcome here.” Offering the Senshi of Time a blanket she hadn’t had a moment before, the goddess continued, “Now, why don’t you get some sleep? The morning will be here soon enough.”

Pluto nodded. Wrapping herself in the subtly sweet-scented blanket, she lay down on the swing seat with her head in Belldandy’s lap. The seat began to gently swing back and forth, and Belldandy started to softly sing what had to be a lullaby in perhaps the one language spoken on Earth that Pluto didn’t know. A moment later another heavenly voice began singing accompaniment. Pluto glanced up and smiled to see Belldandy’s angel Holy Bell hovering over her mistress, mouth open in song and her eyes filled with love.

Still smiling, Pluto closed her eyes and felt Belldandy begin gently stroking her hair. In the morning, her princess would be calling a meeting of the Senshi as soon as she learned of what had happened in the United States and Great Britain, and the Guardian of the Future would have to tell her young friends that there was nothing they could have done to prevent it without making things worse in the long run, that there was nothing they could do now to help for the same reason, and that it was finally time to take the no longer so Small Lady home and pick up Luna and Artemis. But for a few hours she could let the future take care of itself, and she faded off to the sound of the soft, warm, loving voice of her oldest living friend singing her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from the song sung by Gordon Lightfoot. Don't take this to indicate my own views of the actual past, present or future of the US — it's plot driven, and the lyrics simply seem to me to fit the situation of the ongoing collapse of the West (feel free to ignore the last two lines, Kami-sama won't be making any appearances even if the Norns do on occasion):
> 
> Turn around, go back down, back the way you came  
> Can't you see that flash of fire ten times brighter than the day  
> And behold the mighty city broken in the dust again  
> Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again
> 
> Turn around, go back down, back the way you came  
> Babylon is laid to waste, Egypt's buried in her shame  
> Their mighty men are beaten down, their kings have fallen in the ways  
> Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again
> 
> Turn around, go back down, back the way you came  
> Terror is on every side, lo the leaders are dismayed  
> Those who put their faith in fire, in fire their faith shall be repaid  
> Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again
> 
> Turn around, go back down, back the way you came  
> Shout a warning to the nations that the sword of God is raised  
> On Babylon that mighty city, rich in treasure, wide in fame  
> It shall cause thy tower to fall and make it be a pyre of flame  
> Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again
> 
> Oh thou that dwell on many waters, rich in treasure, wide in fame  
> Bow unto a god of gold, thy pride of might shall be thy shame  
> Oh God, the pride of man, broken in the dust again
> 
> And only God can lead the people back into the earth again  
> Thy holy mountain be restored, thy mercy on thy people, Lord!


	2. A Cord of Three Strands

Usagi stirred, moaning as she screwed her eyes shut, trying hopelessly to hold on to the last dregs of sleep as the morning sunlight crept across her part of the bed. Finally giving up the effort, she sat up with a groan before glancing down fondly at her still-snoring husband. The two _really_ shouldn’t have had as fun a night as they had before so active a day — or at least as _late_ a night as they had — but their day in Nerima with Ranma, Akane, Usa (she’d finally insisted they drop the “Chibi-” completely instead of haphazardly), Hotaru along with Akane’s local friends didn’t start until their meeting at Uc-chan’s at noon. Of course, some of that time would be spent as Sailor Moon doing a surprise reprise of that afternoon months ago that she’d spent as a waitress, though this time with more Senshi and “Hammer” added to the staff. The pre-movie news reels were out for the latest climactic battle, and Akane would appreciate the chance to enjoy the accolades she deserved for the part she’d played from those that had known her longest....

A quick shower later, the princess without a people lightly kissed her prince as they passed (firmly ignoring his morning breath, though perhaps she should start holding off until after he’d brushed his teeth?), and sat down in front of her mirror. The sound of the shower started, quickly followed by the caterwauling her husband fondly considered to be singing and she pushed the power button on the radio for _real_ singing to drown out Mamoru’s with one hand while reaching up to loosen her long hair from her nighttime bundle with the other. As the radio came on, she reached for her brush preparatory to rebraiding her hair into the style her little sister had convinced her to adopt, only to freeze as the tone of her favorite morning radio personality registered. The normally cheerful woman sounded stunned, haunted. _“— still much too early to know how many are dead, but there is no doubt that the final tally will be in the millions....”_

Usagi listened in mounting horror as the story of the previous night’s terrorist attacks unfolded, until she finally sprang from her seat and charged for the bathroom. “Mamoru!”

/oOo\

Belldandy felt the head resting in her lap stir and glanced down from the mid-morning sun to the face of her oldest mortal friend. The lovely brunette smiled down at sleep-filled eyes and let her song fade away, her Holy Bell’s accompaniment fading with her. It had been a peaceful night and morning — not unusual that Keiichi had accepted his fiancée’s silent wave-off with an understanding shrug and a wave goodbye as he’d headed off to a meet, but Skuld’s and Urd’s forbearance had been a pleasant surprise — but it was finally time for the Senshi of Time to resume her self-imposed duty.

Sailor Pluto blinked up at her, then glanced up at the sun and sat up with a yelp. “What time —” the emerald-haired woman started, then broke off as a silently smiling Holly Bell leaned down to kiss her softly on the cheek. Pluto watched, smiling wistfully and touching her cheek, as the angel shrank and vanished into her mistress. “I think I envy you goddesses your angels most,” she whispered, then sighed and straightened. “It’s nine o’clock, why did you let me sleep so late?”

Belldandy hid a stab of sadness at her friend’s transformation behind her normal serenity. “An hour is plenty of time for a shower and breakfast before you need to leave for your meeting,” she replied. “You’d simply spend more time fretting until you were almost panicked.”

“You could be right, though not as right you would have been before Yasuko’s awakening. But it won’t be as bad as it would have been ... probably,” Pluto mused softly as she stood and stretched.

Belldandy stood as well, and reached up to place a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder. “You know you are always welcome here, whatever happens,” she assured her friend.

Pluto nodded, covering her oldest living friend’s hand with her own. “I know.” Taking a deep breath, she briskly added, “And I’m definitely looking forward to your cooking — I only know one woman living who comes close to matching it.”

/oOo\

Ranma and Akane reeled in shock as they followed Xian Pu into the Hikawa Shrine’s family room, their hold on their centers shattering under the onslaught of anger, grief, and uneasy tension — especially the white-hot rage radiating from “Yasuko’s” older sister.

Their Amazon “bodyguard” glanced at her princess and the princess consort when their steps faltered, but turned back to looking over the room when Ranma shook her head. Suddenly not-so-obligatory scan complete, Xian Pu whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Big sis is _really_ pissed off,” Ranma whispered back, “Don’t worry about it.” Xian Pu nodded and withdrew from the room, while Ranma and Akane strode eagerly over toward where the Outers and Usa sat, the newcomers’ eyes fixed on Hotaru. Their friend rose at their approach and Akane instantly pulled her into a hug, lifting the small, seemingly frail girl off the floor.

“Hey, Firefly, good ta see ya,” Ranma said as she reached the group. “So how ya been?”

“Air!” the dark-haired girl gasped, and Akane dropped her back to the floor, blushing as the others around them laughed softly. “I’m fine, really, nothing’s changed since you called yesterday, or the day before that, or before that,” Hotaru continued.

“Yes, well, seeing it in person is better than hearing you say it over the phone,” Akane replied, sobering. “I just wish we could have been here for you.” _While you dealt with how you accidentally killed over a score of our own people,_ she didn’t add, but it seemed to hang in the air nonetheless.

But Hotaru ignored the subtext and shook her head. “No, Ranma had her own responsibilities and you couldn’t let her go alone. Besides, I had Usa and my mothers, the other Senshi, you two just had each other.”

Ranma had to agree with her lover, about it being better in person, at least — for the rest, she wasn’t so sure. Hotaru looked healthy enough, better than she had when they’d first met and she and Usa started training with Ranma and Akane, but ... there was something Ranma had seen all too often over the past month at Nikko, a fragile air about her, a bruised look around the eyes. Hotaru wasn’t dealing with the deaths as well as she claimed. Concerned, the former and present princess sought her center, only to just as quickly let it go under the hammerblow of the warring emotions saturating the ki in the room. Wincing slightly, the redhead glanced over at Usa, risen to stand to the side just behind her best friend. On the surface the princess from the future seemed to be focused on the newcomers, but her body language said different — wherever her eyes might have been looking, her focus was fixed on the sometimes Senshi of Destruction.

_Damn it, why didn’t we bring Kasumi with us?_ Ranma thought, searching for something to say, some comfort to give, anything. She’d had a much easier time with the — her — Amazons, but they’d been raised to combat, Hotaru hadn’t, and Ranma’s sudden relationship with Akane and even more surprising ascension to princesshood had only started to cure her foot-in-mouth disease.

Then the chance to say anything vanished as the room abruptly went silent, and Ranma turned to find Puu standing in the doorway, and her big sister rising to her feet.

/\

Usagi sat on the couch, her hand clutching her husband’s, staring at the doorway, waiting. She was distantly aware of the rest of the Senshi along with her younger sister and her sister’s lover (and her sister’s official Amazon bodyguard and friend as well, of course, but Shampoo had quickly looked over the room then withdrawn). Except for Ranma and Akane, each of the young women and girls had greeted their princess (or sister, or sort-of-sister-in-law) as they arrived but avoided her after that, sitting or standing about the room talking with each other in hushed tones and every so often sending anxious glances her way.

She knew she would owe them all an apology later for the way she’d ignored them, from the way she’d brushed past Rei on her arrival to how she’d barely acknowledged the arrival of the contingent from Nerima. (Not that Ranma and Akane had attempted to talk to her — they’d gone pale as soon as they stepped in the room, and she was sure their beeline for the Outers was as much to avoid her as to greet their friends.) At the moment, though, Usagi was too busy fighting to control her anger — an anger that had sprung to life as she and her husband had turned on their television to watch the reports coming in from around the outskirts of the destroyed cities, and had grown more intense every time she again remembered the shaky video of the mushroom-shaped cloud that a movie production taping outside San Francisco had caught. Not even her white-hot anger when she’d realized that Ranma was little Yasuko reincarnated and actually attacked Setsuna came close.

Usagi’s eyes lifted from the doorway to the clock on the wall. Almost ten o’clock, and though Setsuna hadn’t been home when she called and none of the Senshi — true or adopted — had known her whereabouts, it was inconceivable that the Senshi of Time wouldn’t know about the impromptu meeting.

Then the room went as silent as a tomb, and the Moon Princess’s eye’s dropped to find the emerald-haired, black and white-fukued Sailor Pluto standing in the doorway, the Garnet Staff in hand.

/\

Sailor Pluto _stepped_ into the hallway leading to the Hikawa Shrine family room, and instantly raised her hands as the purple-haired girl standing by the doorway whirled toward her, twin chúi raised. {Easy, Xian Pu,} she murmured in the girl’s native language.

Xian Pu relaxed as she recognized the new arrival. Lowering her weapons, she strode down the hall toward Pluto. {Are you sure you want to go in there?} she asked. {I’ve seen the next thing to blood feuds that weren’t that intense.}

Pluto nodded, suppressing a chuckle as she remembered the awe with which she’d been regarded when she’d first met the girl. Of course, even then Xian Pu and Mu Tse had been able to laugh at her little joke. Sobering, she said, {You’re right, but some battles can’t be avoided. Have you heard from Douglas?}

{No, I haven’t heard from Husband once the entire past month,} Xian Pu replied, mouth tightening.

{He’s in a tough spot,} Pluto said. {He’d only known you for a month before you married him and even then as your teacher, and you have family and long-time friends for support. If he talks to you too much, he’s a near-stranger intruding on your time of grief; if he doesn’t, he’s ignoring you. I suspect he’s decided you don’t really want to hear from him right now, and he’s right, isn’t he? Still, perhaps I should suggest to him that at least _one_ letter wouldn’t be taken amiss. With his latest enlistment almost up, he doesn’t have the excuse of being too busy with things he can’t write about, anyway. And you _are_ his wife — the two of you need to start getting to know each other. Perhaps if you write him a letter first? I’ll make sure he gets it.}

Xian Pu nodded jerkily, looking away to hide moist eyes.

After a moment Pluto sighed, briefly laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder, murmured, {I’m sorry}, then strode past her to the doorway.

She paused just inside the entrance, her eyes on her princess as the room went silent and Usagi’s gaze dropped from the clock on the wall to fix on her face even as she let go of her husband’s hand and rose to her feet. Surreptitiously, Mamoru clenched and unclenched his fist as he rose behind his wife, working to get the blood flowing again.

For a long moment, Usagi simply stared. Finally, she said, “You came. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Of course, I came,” Pluto replied calmly, shivering slightly at the hard, almost perfectly even tone of Usagi’s voice. It was as bad as she’d feared, and much worse than the princess’s outburst when she’d learned just what had happened to her little sister. _She_ definitely _has her mother’s temper,_ Pluto thought, remembering times when her usually serene friend and namesake of her daughter had emptied entire wings of the palace of courtiers with an icy calm more feared than her almost as rare angry outbursts, because the target could find herself frozen out _much_ longer. _Over fifty years longer,_ Pluto thought, remembering the future that would have been, without The Day.

“And where was the ‘of course’ when it came to preventing last night’s slaughter?” Usagi demanded, voice finally beginning to rise. “The death toll is in the millions! Don’t tell me that those deaths were necessary!”

“No, not necessary, exactly, just inevitable — if not these, then others in greater numbers down the road.” As the rest of the room’s occupants stared at her, Pluto leaned on her staff, and for a moment it seemed that they could see her four thousand long, lonely years in her eyes. “Nuclear weapons mixed with murderous religious fanaticism meant something like this was bound to happen sooner or later,” she said. “The only way to keep it from happening would be to keep mankind from ever splitting the atom — and how to you make a natural law a state secret? I have enough trouble with computers.”

Ami stiffened where she sat off to the side watching the confrontation with wide eyes, but even as she opened her mouth to demand an explanation Rei grabbed her arm and shook her head quellingly.

Usagi didn’t notice the little act to her right. Her fists clenched and her mouth opened for a blast of scathing condemnation. “You mur — !” she started to rant, only to break off as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

From her left, Hotaru stepped forward away from her friends and other mothers past the leader of the Senshi to stand in front of her third mother, her expression sympathetic. “Setsuna-mama, this is your friendly fire, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.

“In a way, yes — one of many, though I didn’t actually kill any of them myself,” Pluto replied, straightening.

Hotaru stepped forward to pull the taller woman into a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Usagi stared open-mouthed, the tirade she’d prepared as she waited for Pluto to arrive forgotten as her mind flashed back over the assurances they all had given the grieving Hotaru over the past month, telling her how the Japanese soldiers she’d accidentally killed with her last massive blast weren’t her fault, that such things happened in war ... and how her mistake had actually _saved_ lives, put the enemy off-balance, shortened the battle and allowed them to begin recovery efforts more quickly. And now Hotaru had neatly turned around all their arguments. Finally, Usagi’s breath gusted out, her anger shredding away. “Well, _shit_!” she muttered.

Mamoru chuckled as he stepped behind her and his arms circled her waist. “Pretty much took the wind out of our sails, didn’t she?” he murmured in his wife’s ear. “Now you can’t rip on Setsuna without doing the same to Hotaru.”

“I know, I know.” Raising her voice, Usagi pleaded, “Setsuna, _please_ tell me that we can at least bring the ... the ... _animals_ responsible for this to justice!”

But a relieved Pluto shook her head as she returned her unofficial daughter’s embrace. “No, we can’t ... well, we could hunt them down and kill them, but we can’t turn them over to the Americans or Brits for trial without revealing our existence — at least to their governments, not something we want yet. But it isn’t going to matter, one way or the other. If you think last night was bad, just wait a few years. With the bombs that failed to explode or didn’t reach critical mass at New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans and Tel Aviv, the Americans will have at least _some_ proof of who some of those responsible are — and when they eventually respond, it’ll make what they suffered seem like a love tap.” She felt Hotaru’s arms tighten, and sighed as she looked around at the stunned expressions surrounding her. “And yes, _that_ is necessary as well.”

“But _why_?” Usagi wailed.

“I can’t tell you, not yet.” Then as Usagi stiffened in fresh outrage, Puto hastily continued, “I will be able to soon, but there’s something you all need to see first, and something else we need to do — take Usa home.”

Hotaru froze at the sudden announcement, and Pluto heard her faint whimper even as Usa strode toward them. “Puu, no!” the future princess shouted. “She’s — I’m not ready, yet!”

_You had it right the first time,_ Pluto thought, remembering all the nights that the Hotaru and Usa hadn’t told their Neriman friends about, where the two had slept side by side, the pink-haired girl trying to shield her best friend from her nightmares and helping chase them away when she failed. There’d been nothing sexual in it ... not that any of Hotaru’s mothers would have objected if there had ... just two girls closer than sisters. “I know, Usa,” she replied, “and there’s an excellent chance that you’ll be able to return with us. I believe your parents will agree to you splitting your time between your time frame and ours. But whether they agree or not, it’s been six months, and you’re a growing girl. If your parents are going to miss out on you becoming a young woman, they should at least be given the chance to give their ... permission, let’s say, since I doubt they will approve even if they understand.”

Usa stared at the “young” version of her old friend. “I ... I ... I ...” she stammered, searching for a counter-argument.

Hotaru slumped with a sigh in Pluto’s arms, then broke their embrace to turn toward her friend. “She’s right. And besides, we need to fetch back Luna and Artemis. No need to worry,” she bravely tried to assure her friend, “even if your mom and dad refuse to let you come back, I’ll have Ranma and Akane for support. I’ll be all right.”

Usa searched her friend’s face, glanced over to her parents’ counterparts, and forced a weak smile as she took in the their shock at the sudden turn of the conversation before turning back to Hotaru and Pluto. “You’re a lousy liar, but you’re right — both of you,” she reluctantly admitted. “So when do we go?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from the Bible, the 4th chapter of Ecclesiastes:
> 
> Two are better than one,  
> because they have a good return for their labor:  
> If either of them falls down,  
> one can help the other up.  
> But pity anyone who falls  
> and has no one to help them up.  
> Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.  
> But how can one keep warm alone?  
> Though one may be overpowered,  
> two can defend themselves.  
> A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.


	3. Going Home

Ranma, in her red, white and blue Vanguard costume (excuse me, uniform — okay, it’s a costume), glanced up from where she sat in Akane’s lap in the family room of the Hikawa Shrine (Hammer, since she was in her own variation of Ranma’s costume, but the redhead still wasn’t used to thinking of her lover that way) as Usa and Hotaru walked in, followed by Hotaru’s three mothers and Usa’s parent-analogs, back from gathering up Usa and Hotaru’s things from the Outers’ home and saying maybe-goodbye to her grandparents. Setsuna had said that the odds were excellent that Queen Serenity and King Endymion would allow Usa to return, but it wasn’t certain.

Then Nodoka followed behind the others, and Ranma straightened. “Mom, what are ya doin’ here?” she asked, then blushed furiously. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded!” she hastily insisted, waving her hands frantically as laughter erupted around her.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing the same thing, why was I called in?” Nabiki asked from the upholstered chair she was sitting in. “Not that I mind, it wasn’t like I was studying anyway, what with the news from America and England.”

The laughter cut off abruptly. Setsuna glanced around and sighed. “I asked you and Nodoka to join us because we have things we need to discuss after those of us escorting our Usa home return,” she replied.

Nabiki glanced around the room, at Mars rose from the couch she’d been sharing with Mercury, Venus and Jupiter to turn off the television news they’d been watching on the rescue efforts underway at the four destroyed cities. “Since that’s going to be everyone here but me and Auntie Nodoka, unless Ranma’s immunity to magic is a problem,” Nabiki said, “what do we do while you’re gone?”

Setsuna shook her head. “It won’t be a problem, any more than Ranma’s immunity would protect her from, say, one of Mercury’s ice spears — her immunity only protects from magic itself, not effects caused by magic.

“As for how long we’ll be gone, we won’t. Different timelines, we’ll literally return the instant after we leave.”

Then, glancing sympathetically at Hotaru, she continued, “And it’s time. Everyone not transformed yet, do so.”

Henshin wands appeared in newcomers’ palms, and then every eye in the room except Nabiki and Nodoka’s focused on Mamoru. He glanced around, smiled, and said, “Why don’t Usagi and I step into the next room?”

“Right,” a faintly blushing Usagi agreed, and turned to lead her husband from the room, ignoring the sniggers from behind her as Mamoru closed the door.

“What was that — ?” a confused Nabiki started to ask, just as henshin wands were lifted, and the room erupted with light as various transformation sequences were activated. In seconds it was over, leaving Nodoka staring wide-eyed and Nabiki sniggering. “That ... was a lot of skin showing,” Nabiki managed to get out as the door reopened and Moon and Endymion rejoined them.

The Princess was still blushing but she had a happy smile on her face to match her husband’s. “I never get tired of that,” he murmured as they rejoined their friends.

Mercury shot him a pointed look as fresh sniggers broke out and Moon’s blush turned fiery, before pointedly turning back to Nabiki and Nodoka. “I know!” the Senshi of Ice groused. “I’ve looked at the equations, but they’re so far over my head they might as well be in a foreign language. But the scientists that developed it and everyone that checked out the numbers in the centuries after swore on their souls that was what the science demanded.”

Pluto chuckled as she added, “Though Moon’s mother always said she thought they were playing a massive prank, you would not _believe_ the prank she played on the head of the research team in retaliation.” Then she sobered as she turned to face the doorway to the hall.

/\

Vanguard stood waiting by her lover, fighting to stay relaxed as Mercury stepped through the shimmering grays of the portal Pluto had formed in one of the doorways of the family room. (When the Senshi of Ice had commented on the ease of travel to the Gates this time, a smirking Pluto had replied that she couldn’t make it seem _too_ easy before or everyone would want to make the trip.) Ranma had considered himself well traveled when he arrived at the Tendo dojo. Hadn’t he been throughout the islands of Japan from north to south, again and again? Even journeyed into the depths of China? But the universe that had opened up to her with her Awakening and the transdimensional invasion she had helped beat back had taken “traveled” to a whole new scale — the memory of seeing Earthrise from her mother’s palace on the moon could still bring tears to her eyes at times, and not just because of all she’d lost in the Fall.

Venus then Jupiter followed their teammate. _At least we managed to convince Shampoo and her current partner to accept a direct order to stay behind,_ Vanguard thought as she glanced over her shoulder at her mother bending over to embrace Chibi-Moon — Nodoka had become like another mother to the two youngest Senshi since she had become a fixture at the Outers’ home. The teenager’s sort-of parents and the Outers were close by, and the mix of love and regret coming from the hugging pair brought a lump to the Amazon princess’s throat. Then Akane — Hammer — nudged her. “Mars is through, our turn.” Vanguard turned back to the portal, took a deep breath, and stepped forward through the curtain of grays.

During their sister-bonding time Usagi had told Ranma of her own limited experience with the Time Gates, so when the redhead stepped through the portal she had expected to find a bleak landscape of bare earth and drifting mist around the column-framed paneled doorway of Puu’s charge — simultaneously her greatest tool and responsibility. What Vanguard _hadn’t_ expected was to walk through the portal into a blinding glare like the light of a thousand suns stabbing through her eyes into her brain. She stumbled and fell to her knees and one hand as her other hand clapped over her eyes, her hold on her center shattering in a wave of pain worse than the scalding she had taken across the eyes months before. Distantly, through the instant pounding headache, she wondered why her scream of pain had seemed to come in stereo.

“Vanguard!” “Hammer!” “What’s wrong?!” The shouts of the Senshi that had preceded her seemed to bounce around inside her head, and Vanguard felt arms circle her.

“Akane?” she managed to gasp out as the arms around her gently lifted her up and back to settle into a Senshi’s lap. A groping hand found hers, and as she recovered her center she felt Akane’s ki flood into her, intertwined with concern. She quickly intertwined her own ki with reassurance to return to her lover, and the two merged their mutual relief and love.

“She’s in the same condition as you,” came Venus’s voice in her ear — only that voice was missing its usual slightly vacant bubbliness, had become sharp and direct with concern. “Mars and Jupiter have her. Mercury’s scanning you both. What happened? Are you all right?”

“We’re fine, just dazzled,” Vanguard assured her. “What’s with all the light? Big sis didn’t say anything about that!”

“Light? What light? This place is as dreary as ever. Yasuko, Akane, are you all right? What happened?” Moon demanded.

As the Senshi filled in the new arrivals, Vanguard lifted her hand away from her eyes — nothing, no light was coming through her eyelids. With a sigh of relief she opened her eyes and looked over at Akane ( _No, ‘Hammer’, when she’s in costume_ ), beside her in Jupiter’s lap, to find her looking back. The two shared relieved smiles, and Vanguard glanced around to find the setting for the Gates as bleak as the sister now crouched beside her had described.

Then Pluto settled down in front of them. “I’m sorry, Ranma, Akane,” she said. “I knew this happened from future discussions, but I can’t use the Time Gates to look at future events here and I didn’t realize it would be this bad.”

“Trust Ranma to underplay how much something hurts,” Akane said with a pained giggle, squeezing her lover’s hand. “So what _did_ happen?”

“I didn’t realize it before you two helped create our new future, but ki is somehow related to how the Time Gates function, connects them to every living thing in history,” Pluto replied. “When you came through, your ki-sense was hit by all the ki that forms that connection at once.”

“Ouch.” Reluctantly, Vanguard eased her ki apart from Hammer’s with an apologetic smile before letting go of her center. She felt suddenly empty as the sense of her other half vanished. With a sigh, she let go of Hammer’s hand and stood up. “So, no centerin’ before comin’ here,” she said as she offered a hand to Hammer then dusted herself off. _But me an’ Akane were able ta center so long as we were touchin’ an’ focused on each other — hafta do some testin’ later, see what’s up._ “Fun’s over. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Right,” Pluto agreed as she and the other Senshi rose to their feet. She turned to the Gates, Chibi-Moon hurrying over to join her. Instantly, the paneled doors were replaced by flickering images that soon settled on a daytime city street no different from any they’d known all their lives — except that _this_ city had been devastated; weeds growing from a network of cracks in the road where it wasn’t cratered; the buildings lining the street scorched, gutted, holed shells with empty windows and the occasional broken, badly weathered sign in Japanese.

“That’s not Crystal Tokyo, where _is_ it?” Jupiter gasped.

“When, rather,” Pluto replied. “That is Tokyo, year 2072, and what we had to look forward to before Ranma Awoke. What _I_ had to look forward to, rather — I had no intention of telling any of you what was coming. You all were going to have a bad enough time watching things deteriorate without knowing how bad they were going to get. The reason we’re seeing it now ...” The Senshi of Time glanced down at the pink-haired teenager beside her, unaware of the nostalgic smile that spread across her face as she realized how high “down” had gotten over the years. “Chibi-Moon, remember that massive instant headache you had, on The Day?”

Chibi-Moon nodded. “Yeah, I’d never felt anything like it before. You said it was because of the future realigning.”

“Yes, and that was true as far as it went, but more than that it was your connection to your home dimension breaking under the stress of the realignment. Without that connection, your Crystal Tokyo becomes just one more timeline out of a practically infinite number — the proverbial needle in a haystack.

“But your Puu and I knew that this could happen for any number of reasons, so we agreed to use _this_ time and place as a rendezvous spot.” Turning from Chibi-Moon, Pluto looked back out at the cityscape framed in the doorway, her face bleak. “Where nothing we are likely to do could possibly make things worse for those few still alive.”

She took a deep breath, forcing her expression into her usual serene mask, then nodded. “Let’s go. Chibi-Moon, you first.”


	4. Ancient Regrets

_The 30th century, sort of:_

“I’m going to miss you, Puu,” Chibi-Usa said, as she hugged Princess Pluto. (That title was just a bit ridiculous, seeing how there had been no life on Pluto since the Fall five thousand years before, but when the Senshi had founded Crystal Tokyo they had decided that using the ancient titles would give them badly needed added stature among Earth’s survivors.)

Pluto sighed as she returned the hug. The then-tiny crown princess had slipped past her armor of inscrutability long before, and had turned grabbing little private moments of personal intimacy into something of a game. She had mostly stopped as she grew up and took on a teenager’s prickly insistence on being treated “like an adult,” and Pluto treasured those moments when the now not-so-tiny princess relaxed.

And after _this_ trip to the past, it was going to be a long time before Crown Princess Usagi forgave her and her parents for not telling her that the visit would be her last — or that it would last much longer than she expected, to give her time to mourn the death of her best friend with her Baka-Mama, pseudo-father, and the other Senshi. But what else could they do? If they had told her, it would ruin her last days with her Firefly.

Breaking the hug, Chibi-Usa stepped over to the Time Gates, checked over her clothes once more (a simple T-shirt and jeans, nothing like her usual court gowns such as the one Pluto was wearing, and yet another reason the Heir enjoyed her trips to the past so much), waved jauntily and stepped through — and even as two apparent housecats stepped through the Gates to join Princess Pluto an instant later, an alarm slammed into the Senshi of Time’s mind. ALERT! LINK TO PRINCESS USAGI SEVERED! ALERT! LINK TO PRINCESS USAGI SEVERED! ALERT! ...

The emerald-haired woman ignored the greetings of the two Mau advisors as the Garnet Staff appeared in one hand. “End alert,” she ordered, voice taut with sudden fear. “Scan the Usagi/Setsuna rendezvous point Alpha for the Crown Princess.”

The alert cut off as abruptly as it had started. PRINCESS USAGI DETECTED AT PREARRANGED COORDINATES.

Pluto slumped as relief as abrupt and all-encompassing as the preceding near-panic washed through her. “Show freeze view,” she ordered. The cats, confused by the way their arrival was being ignored, turned around to stare at the image that flared into existence behind them. Framed in the Time Gates was the image of Sailor Chibi-Moon, frozen in the act of stepping out of a doorway-shaped sheet of swirled grays into a neglected, devastated Japanese city street.

“Your Highness, what is going on?” the black cat with a white quarter moon on her forehead asked, further confused by the one-sided conversation she and her mate were listening in on.

Pluto looked down at her guests and gave them a shaky smile. “Hi, Luna, Artemis,” she said. “Something broke Chibi-Usa’s link to our home timeline, and your Pluto is bringing her to our rendezvous location to return her to us.”

“What?! How did _that_ happen?” the white cat with a black quarter moon on his forehead demanded.

“I don’t know, Artemis, you now know as much as I do. Give me a little while to find out.” For a moment, Pluto considered taking the two Mau advisors to Crystal Tokyo and their doubles and Diana waiting to welcome them before investigating further — giving her a chance to find out what was happening in private in case some of it was “need to know” — but reluctantly rejected the idea. The two were likely to simply refuse to leave at this point, and she couldn’t see any way to change their minds without making her desire for secrecy obvious. Besides, they were bound to speculate about it, and she didn’t want to scare her queen.

With a soft sigh, she gave up before the pause became obvious. Looking back up at the Gates, she ordered, “Unlock view, ten to one speed.” The image of the Crown Princess instantly started into motion, taking several slow-motion steps away from the portal before the twentieth-century Sailor Jupiter exited, followed by Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Endymion, and — _Saturn? Her_ parents _? What is their Pluto_ thinking _?! If they learn how she’s going to die —_

Then a small redheaded teenage girl in a red, blue, and white costume similar to the Senshi’s stepped out of the portal, and Princess Pluto felt as if she’d taken a punch to the gut at the sight of one of her greatest failures.

“Yasuko!” she breathed. “What the hell ... ?” But at no point in his life would Ranma have voluntarily worn something so girly — And then the taller, raven-haired form of Ranma’s first Tendo fiancée stepped out behind her, dressed in a costume similar to Ranma’s, and Pluto’s mind simply shut down from the overload. She watched blankly as the thousand-year younger version of herself stepped through the portal and turned to shut it down then waited ... and waited....

“Ow!!!” Princess Pluto leaped away from the white cat that had crawled under her dress and spiked his claws into his host’s bare calf.

“Now that I have your attention,” Artemis said, licking the blood from his claws, “what is going on? Who are the extras?”

“You don’t know?” Princess Pluto asked, then answered her own question, “Of course, you don’t know. If you did, your Pluto would have warned me when we set this up. Gates, freeze, reverse ten to one.” She waited as the view backed up until her younger counterpart was about to step backwards into her portal. “Freeze. Scan my counterpart, identify home dimension, locate the departure point of my counterpart.”

DIMENSION LOCATED. An image appeared of the family room that had been the location of many a Senshi gathering, and Princess Pluto felt a wave of bittersweet nostalgia at the memories it invoked — happy times, pranks she’d played on her future queen, trials and fights discussed and planned for, the family of Outers she had enjoyed for a time — but it had all gone bad in the end as she’d known it would, and she forced the thoughts to the side as she considered the two women standing frozen in time in the middle of the room, facing the then-still-extant portal that the Senshi, Ranma and Akane had left through. The only reason Pluto was able to recognize them as Saotome Nodoka and Tendo Nabiki after all the intervening centuries was the jog to her memory from seeing Yasuko and Akane, but they had never been in the room they were now standing in — Ranma hadn’t met the Senshi until decades later, and by then Nodoka was dead and the Shrine had already been destroyed. Obviously, something in _this_ dimension had changed, and radically.

“Locate time and location of the latest previous arrival of the Crown Princess in this dimension, then advance at sixty to one.” The scene shifted to Chibi-Usa stepping out of the portal she had just left through before the connection had been broken into the Outers’ family room, to be greeted by her best friend before the two waiting Mau advisors entered the portal and it vanished. The Gates fast forwarded through a night out at a restaurant, the return home where Chibi-Usa and Hotaru spent hours talking into the night, the Firefly leaving for school the next morning, Chibi-Usa collapsing on the way to the kitchen —

“Stop. Reverse three minutes, resume forward at normal speed.” The Senshi of Time and the Mau advisors watched, Pluto in stunned disbelief, the two cats in confusion as the scene in the Outers’ kitchen between Chibi-Usa and Setsuna played out.

When that time’s Sailor Pluto _stepped_ out of the Outers’ kitchen, Princess Pluto again froze the image before looking down at her guests. “Artemis, Luna, this looks like it is going to take a while to research, and there’s no reason for you to sit here and be bored. Why don’t I take you to Crystal Tokyo first? My Luna and Artemis — and Diana — are waiting for you.” She hid a smile at the pair’s reluctant agreement. Others never seemed to quite understand just how “outside of time” worked, and she was happy to take advantage of that fact when necessary.

/\

Princess Pluto stood with a groan from where she had been sitting in the cushioned chair from her palace, stretching stiff muscles. How many hours she had been sitting there she didn’t know. She could find out with a thought, but didn’t bother — one more massive research dive to add to the uncountable number that she had performed in the past five thousand years, and it wasn’t like it would make a difference as to when she returned to her home timeline, _that_ would be the instant she’d left.

But this time the infodive had been an exceptionally emotional one, and she wiped again at tear-wet cheeks with the handkerchief she had returned to her palace for within the first half-hour. As she had watched her dead friend’s younger daughter awaken to her previous life to build a future with the girl she loved, and joined with her older sister and the rest of the Senshi to beat back the Confederacy at a high price but without sacrificing the teenager Pluto had come to love like a daughter in spite of herself, Princess Pluto had found herself envying her millennium-younger other-self like she had never envied anyone in her life.

_Enough, Setsuna, life is as it is. It wasn’t your fault that things worked out as they did with your Ranma and Akane, not your fault that your Hotaru had to sacrifice herself to save the Earth. And it’s not their counterparts’ fault that you now have to tell your Queen that she’ll finally be meeting her younger sister ... again._

That was all true, but it wasn’t going to make it any easier to explain to her friend that her trusted advisor and mentor had known of the life Yasuko had lived as Ranma a thousand years before, and done nothing but watch.

“Gates, mirror function.” The image in the Time Gates, once again of Nodoka and Nabiki waiting for their family and the Senshi to return, vanished to show Pluto her own image — face drawn with exhaustion, eyes bloodshot and puffy, cheeks red-roughened from almost constant wiping. And then her stomach rumbled. _But first, a message to King Endymion and Queen Serenity that their daughter is fine and I’ll report first thing in the morning, a meal and some sleep. I’ll need to be my stoic best for_ that _meeting._

/oOo\

“Ranma was Yasuko,” Queen Serenity II repeated in a painfully even tone leeched of all emotion that only highlighted how angry she was.

Princess Pluto nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And you knew this even before Hotaru died, decades before we met him during the Rise of the Machines,” Serenity continued in the same emotionless tone.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Serenity leaned back in the comfortable office chair and fought for control as she stared across the conference table at her most trusted adviser. Her husband laid a comforting hand on her arm, and she reached across with her other hand to gently clasp his hand. She had known it was going to be bad when Princess Pluto had requested a private meeting in a conference room — to those that knew her Pluto wasn’t as inscrutable as she liked to think, and Serenity had long since noticed that her advisor preferred to have a table between them when telling her Queen something she wouldn’t like hearing. But not this bad, and she felt herself beginning to shake as she thought of the years she had known the raven-haired martial artist and his extended family — and hadn’t known. “Why didn’t you _tell_ us?” she finally managed to ask. “Why didn’t you tell _me_?”

Princess Pluto sat hunched over, looking down at the table. “When I first learned who Yasuko was, Ranma was sixteen, had only just been cursed,” she said quietly. “You weren’t all that much older, and hadn’t learned yet that sometimes the only thing you can do is stand back and wait. You would have gathered up the Senshi and charged into that _clusterfuck_ his father created, and made things even worse.”

Serenity stared for a moment, shocked at the profanity that Pluto _never_ engaged in, then shot to her feet. “Worse? _Worse?!_ ” she shouted, leaning over the table. “His first fiancée snapped! She killed one rival, crippled another, tried to kill Ranma! She spent the rest of her life in an insane asylum, and it was all ... Katsumi, Kiyomi, whatever his wife’s name was, could do to talk him out of killing himself!”

“Kasumi, and I know, Your Majesty, I know. And yes, it would have been worse,” Pluto replied, voice shaking. “The middle Tendo sister, Nabiki, was intelligent enough to find out who we were, but not wise enough at the time not to look — she would have outed us, as much by mistake as anything while trying to get as much yen as possible. The results would have been catastrophic.”

Serenity blanched at Pluto’s retort, then slowly sat back down next to her husband. Endymion reached over to again take her hand. Glancing at his suddenly thoughtful wife out of the corner of his eye, he asked, “What about when we met later?”

Setsuna shrugged, still looking down. “By that time he was over sixty years old, a grandfather,” she replied. The quaver in her voice was gone, now she just sounded tired. “He never did accept the curse, not really, and wouldn’t have believed us if we told him he was the reincarnation of a six-year-old princess — he wouldn’t have _allowed_ himself to believe us. And he was one of your best fighters against the Tokyo Zonemind, you couldn’t afford to have him doubting you. Besides, none of you were talking to me at that point — hadn’t been since you threw me out after our Firefly’s death — you probably wouldn’t have believed me, either.”

Serenity stared at the obviously miserable woman across the table from her, then sighed and let go of her husband’s hand. She rose from her chair to stride around the table. “Stand up,” she ordered. Princess Pluto looked up at her stern expression, then hesitantly rose to her feet. Serenity promptly pulled her into a hug. “Inscrutable, my ass,” she whispered in her adviser’s ear, startling a watery laugh from the emerald-haired woman. “Better,” Serenity said in approval, stepping back to hold the Senshi of Time at arm’s length. “I’m sorry I screamed at you.”

Princess Pluto laughed again, more naturally this time. “You took it much better than your counterpart did. When _she_ found out, she did her best to beat her Setsuna unconscious!”

‘She didn’t!” Serenity and Endymion’s laughter joined with Pluto’s. When it died down to chuckles, Serenity sobered. “Setsuna, my little sister, the one coming to visit us. Is she happy?”

Pluto smiled, reaching up to cover the hands still on her shoulders with her own. “Right now, she’s still having nightmares from that pit of cats and being molested, and added more from their last battle on top of them. She’s one of the most masculine young men you will ever meet, trapped in a girl’s body for what she’s probably beginning to realize will be a _very_ long life. She’s had more responsibility than she ever wanted dumped on her shoulders without warning, and has only the vaguest clue how to fulfill them.... And she has a lover, mother, and big sister that love her unconditionally; true friends to have fun with or watch her back and cheer her up when she’s down; and she’s spending every free moment her people will allow developing an entirely new ki-based martial style even as she reinvents the healing arts of the Life Dancers. I don’t think she’s ever been happier in her life.”

Serenity smiled wistfully. “I’m glad.” Releasing her adviser’s shoulders, she crossed one arm under her breasts while she tapped her lips with the other hand. “How long was our little Sprout in the twenty-first century this time?”

“About six months,” Pluto replied.

Serenity glanced over at her husband, now grinning at her. “Too long?”

“ _Much_ too long,” he instantly agreed.

“Right.” Serenity nodded firmly, then straightened. “By royal decree,” she said in as pompous a tone as she could manage, “we will skip the usual ‘equal time’ for Crown Princess Usagi slash Sailor Chibi-Moon’s visits to the past and bring her and her friends home in two days. King Endymion, see to the arrangements.”

He nodded, all mock-solemnity. “As Her Majesty commands. And what will Her Majesty be doing in the meantime?”

“Why, gossiping, of course!” Serenity grabbed a now-giggling Pluto’s hand and pulled her toward the door. “Come on, _Puu-chan_ , you are going to tell me _all_ the news on what our little ones have been up to, both of them — no, all three of them, Hotaru-chan too! And no leaving out the juicy parts, I need to know what to hold over my daughter’s head when she gets fractious again....”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little fun with the mechanics of time travel. Usa's link with her home dimension might not break until the morning after her arrival, but for her Pluto it's going to happen instantly. And of course, since the rendezvous point is in a different timeline as well, Pluto can find it immediately even though for her Crown Princess subjectively it's six months later. Time/dimensional travel can get a bit confusing....


	5. Mary

_Japan, what used to be a Buddhist temple not far from the Nekomi Institute of Technology, now Sanctuary, 2072:_

When the early morning light peeked under her bedroom window blinds Setsuna finally sat up in bed, stretched, and yawned.  Unfortunately, it was a ‘laid in bed awake all night’ yawn rather than a ‘just waking up’ one.  Still, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d gone into a day of central importance without any sleep at all.  The night before Hotaru died —

The emerald-haired young/ancient woman forced the memory away with time-worn ease and stepped over to her full-length mirror to critically examine her body, naked except for a pair of panties, before nodding.  She’d kept herself in good shape over the decades since the other Senshi had thrown her out, she would have no reason to be embarrassed when she met them again that day.  _Except for the bleary, red-rimmed eyes and fatigue lines_ , she thought with a grimace, _but some subtle makeup will take care of that_.

Satisfied, she turned away to head for her bathroom shower — a quick switch into her Senshi form and back would have cleaned her up nicely, and the Tokyo Zonemind couldn’t detect her through Belldandy’s wards, but it simply wouldn’t have the same sensual comfort of a hot shower.  And it wasn’t like she didn’t have plenty of time.

/\

Setsuna looked up from the middle of the breakfast preparations for Sanctuary’s residents to smile in the face of Belldandy’s quelling frown.  (The frown took some effort, considering the sight of possibly the most powerful mortal on Earth dressed in a simple house dress and apron rushing about to keep up with preparations of enough food for a small mob.)  The earth-haired triangle-tattooed goddess sighed as she stepped into the kitchen.  “Set-chan, you know you don’t need to do this,” she said yet again.

“I know, I know,” Setsuna replied airily, waving off her hostess’s mild complaint.  “But I don’t do it all _that_ often, and you’ve made a place for me in your home these last sixteen years — I have to do _something_ on occasion for the hospitality.  Besides, I was up anyway, I might as well be doing something.”

Belldandy’s expression flickered to concern and back to wry amusement at the oblique reference to the day’s importance, but she ignored it to say, “Nonsense, you’ve made yourself more than useful — the grandchildren love their ‘Auntie Set-chan’.”  Her amusement softened into gratitude.  “And your help comforting the ones who’ve had to be told that Mommy or Daddy isn’t coming home has been a gift beyond price.”

“It was the least I could do, I just wish I could have done more,” Setsuna said, gaze falling to the floor, only to stiffen when Belldandy’s fingers under her chin forced her head back up to meet the goddess’s understanding gaze.

“When Shinsaku was killed, you were hiding an arms cache for a wandering band of junkrats to stumble across in Zone Denver.  With Kenjiro you were busy keeping the Brisbane Zonemind’s experiments with nanotech from wiping the Earth clean of life.  For Akihisa you were hiding the traces of a rebel spy in Zone Washington, for Kolgrima you were organizing counter-preachers to combat the false prophets the Tel Aviv Zonemind has emplaced in its slave camps, for Heimdis you were arranging the improved mental capacity and faulty brainwashing of the Mexico City Zonemind’s latest genetic manipulations, and for Tetsu you were sabotaging the New Delhi Zonemind’s attempts to develop a space industry.  It isn’t as if you have been sitting back and doing nothing while my descendants fought your battles.”

Setsuna stared at her oldest friend, eyes wide with shock, only Belldandy’s hand keeping her jaw from dropping.  “Bell, I … I … you … why …” she stuttered, until Belldandy silenced her with a gentle finger against her lips.

“I knew we would be having this conversation — I couldn’t let you leave, so guilt-burdened — so I checked your file,” the goddess said in answer to the question her friend had been unable to get out.  “As with your Hotaru, my children and grandchildren sacrificed their lives for the future, and like you I had to stand back and let them do it.  At least you have been able to take an active part in the war, I am limited to providing a refuge for my immediate descendants that choose to accept it.  Even Keiichi, as old as he is, has refused to hide behind my wards with our great-grandchildren and the younger grandchildren and some of their mothers — though at least, as old as he is, he is limited to maintaining what vehicles and robots your Sailor Moon’s Tokyo Resistance has managed to acquire.”

For a moment she paused, her face drawn from her own worries.  She knew that in the long run all her descendants would be fine, whatever happened to them during their mortal lives — she had raised them well, where their souls were headed after death was not in doubt — but that didn’t mean she didn’t hurt when they did, or miss them when they died and left the rest of the family behind.

But it was only a moment, before she forced her usual serene expression firmly back into place.  _All is well with them, and they will meet their father again, soon enough._   She had to smile — it seemed in her decades with her husband she had acquired his sense of time, something she would have to give up when their time together was over.  Though she would have her memories — of her time with Keiichi, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren — before her always.

Setsuna raised an eyebrow at Belldandy’s gentle smile, but the goddess simply shook her head and said, “The others will be waking soon, so why don’t we finish breakfast for everyone?  And then my sisters and I will see what we can do to give you some peace until it is time.  I think Skuld has a new game she wants you to try when she inflicts — ah, _offers_ it to the children.”

Setsuna nodded with a laugh, wiped at watery eyes, then suddenly pulled her friend into a brief hug before turning back to the long stove.

/\

Hours later, Setsuna stood at the edge of Belldandy’s wards, looking across the broken ruins of what had once been a thriving city.  The way the lush green grass and thriving trees of Sanctuary abruptly gave way to scattered weeds growing through shattered pavement or collapsing buildings with yards turned into miniature jungles failed to depress her as it usually did — Skuld’s smash-‘em-up racing derby had been a _major_ hit with the little ones, her sides still ached from laughter, and she couldn’t keep her smile off her face.  Not even the knowledge that in a few minutes she was going to be reuniting with the Senshi, and at least in the beginning it wasn’t going to be any more comfortable than her one _very_ brief visit to warn Mercury that the Tokyo Zonemind was about to develop the ability to detect their Senshi forms, could dim her mood.

Finally, she managed to force the smile from her face.  Grinning like a loon when she dropped in on the Senshi would _not_ make them more predisposed to appreciate her presence, even if she had some unknowing ambassadors in Keiichi and Belldandy’s children and grandchildren.

She summoned the Garnet Staff, took a deep breath … and the bottom dropped out of her world.

/\

When Setsuna was able to keep her eyes open without stomach-twisting vertigo, she found herself staring at clean, green grass — cropped grass, a maintained lawn.  She was still in Sanctuary.  She lifted herself up onto her elbows, and fought through her disorientation to find Belldandy and her raven-haired little sister hurrying toward her.  She hadn’t been out very long, then.  She sat up as the two goddesses reached her, Belldandy dropping to her knees and Skuld crouching down.

“Set-chan, you okay?  What happened?” Skuld demanded.

“I’m fine,” Setsuna assured them.  “I’m not sure ... something changed.  It wasn’t like the decision to attack Pearl Harbor ... that _hurt_ , this just —”  She broke off as her vertigo eased off enough that the alert pounding in her mind that only she could hear finally registered: ALERT!  DIMENSIONAL INCURSION!  ALERT!  DIMENSIONAL INCURSION!  ALERT! ...  She frantically looked around for the Garnet Staff, found it lying on the grass beside her, grabbed it and levered herself to her feet.  She gasped out, “I have to go, we have visitors!”  Then she _stepped_ away and a moment later was standing in front of the Time Gates.

“End alert!” she ordered as soon as she arrived, staggered, caught herself and braced herself upright with the Garnet Staff, then sighed with relief as the shouting in her head stopped.  She waited a few minutes, taking deep breaths as her pulse slowed and the last of her earlier disorientation faded.

Finally, she straightened.  While her time at the Gates had no connection to the time of her home, she had an unpleasant task to see through and would just as soon get past this distraction and get it over with.  “Show freeze view of the point of dimensional disturbance,” she ordered, and the paneled doors wavered and vanished to reveal the fluctuating multi-gray of one of her own gates floating in the air over a devastated Japanese city street.  Only — leaving aside the fact that she hadn’t created it — if it was a dimensional incursion it couldn’t be one of _her_ gates.  And now that she thought about it, wasn’t that was the exact moment that she and her alternate-future self had arranged to meet if anything had broken Chibi-Usa’s connection to her home dimension?  It seemed another pair of Plutos had chosen her own dimension for the same purpose — only in their case, they’d needed to use it.

“All right, let’s see just how badly things went wrong for them,” she murmured to herself.  Then louder, “Advance, ten to one rate.”  The view crawled into motion, and as Setsuna hoped, an unwounded, healthy-looking Chibi-Moon was the first through the portal.  What Setsuna did _not_ expect was for her to be followed by the Inners, Moon and Endymion ... and then Setsuna’s alert focus shattered as the next figure stepped out of the portal, and she found herself staring at Sailor Saturn.  She had not seen her adopted daughter since the weeks after the teenager’s death and Haruka and Michiru threw her out of the house they’d shared, the things they’d said, that they’d called her ... when she’d finally realized that she was spending so much time sitting in front of the Time Gates replaying her time living with the Outers that it was affecting her health, she’d walked away and hadn’t looked into that segment of her past since.

Setsuna reached out to touch fingers to the image of the slight raven-haired teenager staring around alertly with the Silence Glaive held ready in a stance Setsuna had never seen.  Tears rolled down the Senshi of Time’s cheeks as she remembered the last time she’d seen her foster daughter alive, when the girl had given each of her mothers a quick embrace and a whispered goodbye before she’d disappeared into the invading Confederacy’s beachhead portal, never to return — memories she had rejected even as she’d watched Belldandy say farewell to her own children and grandchildren leaving to join the fight against the Machines, some to never return.

So caught up was she in her memories that the arrival of the rest of the party and her counterpart shutting down the portal barely registered.  Only the opening of another portal jerked her out of her reminiscing, Princess Pluto from the 30th Century stepping out to smile at Chibi-Moon and nod to her younger counterpart, then wave the other newcomers into the new portal.  The party disappeared through it in the same order they had arrived, the counterpart of her Firefly vanished on her way a thousand years into the future (or _a_ future, at least) followed by Uranus and Neptune and —

Setsuna froze as the presence of the two additional girls that definitely _weren’t_ Senshi, in spite of the way their red, white and blue costumes mimicked those of the rest.  Eyes wide, she watched as the redheaded and raven-haired teenage girls stepped through Princess Pluto’s portal while holding hands and vanished from view, quickly followed by both Plutos.  Even after the second portal vanished she continued to stare at the now-empty street, one though resonating through her mind — _what the hell!!!_

Finally shaking herself free of her shock, she ordered, “Revert to beginning of dimensional incursion, replay two to one.”  She had the sinking feeling that this was going to be a _long_ info session, and she couldn’t _step_ back to Sanctuary for so much as a chair — until she knew exactly what was going on, every second back home was precious.

/\

Long hours later, the Senshi of Time straightened, stretched, and shook out her aching legs.  Her fears of how long the info-dive was going to be had been well founded, but in spite of aching muscles and red cheeks roughened from wiping away tears, her face was lit up by a broad, happy smile.  For the first time in decades she felt light as a feather.

It hadn’t taken her long to figure out why the time-shift had only disoriented her, without the massive headache of the earlier ones.  While the change had been massive, it had been limited to herself and the rest of the Senshi, and those that dealt with them directly — like Belldandy’s descendants caught up in the war.

She briefly considered giving Belldandy the good news.  Her oldest friend had never asked what the future held for those that had joined the fight.  Of course, Belldandy had access to Yggdrasil — the forecasting possible with the advanced-to-the-point-of-magic divine computer that made up the World Tree made what Setsuna did with the Time Gates seem like a child’s meandering — but Setsuna suspected Belldandy hadn’t queried there, either.

_No_ , she finally decided, _leave it to Bell to ask.  She’s never done so before when it was likely to be bad news, and there’s no way I’ll be able to hide my good mood now that it’s good news.  She can make up her own mind whether she wants to know.  Now, let’s grab some food and a cot from Sanctuary and get back here so I can recover from my info-dive without worrying about the newcomers returning before I’m ready, then go back to wait for them._

She couldn’t wait to get a start on what had suddenly become a very _good_ day.  Now, what would be the best way to play this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from a song by Patti Griffith, "Mary." While much of the song is metaphor/simile to the point of indecipherability, the main point is clear enough. The most relevant part is:
> 
> You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud  
> Of another man, who served the world proud.  
> You greet another son, you lose another one  
> On some sunny day and always you stay....  
> Mary.
> 
> The names of Belldandy's sons and/or grandsons that died in the war are Japanese, while the names of the two women are Norse.
> 
> Belldandy's thought about her children moving on and her time sense comes from a scene in the manga that I couldn't find quickly, where Keiichi impressed Peorth by commenting how sad it was that mortals left the gods behind. As I remember it, she told him not to worry about Belldandy, she would always have the memory of her time with Keiichi, as if it was present.


	6. The Road Not Taken

Chibi-Moon was practically vibrating where she stood in the middle of the torn up street, trying to force herself to watch for any possible threats as she waited for Puu — _her_ Puu — to come for them.  It had been so _long_.  Of course, she’d known that this time trip was going to be longer than most to date, but she hadn’t really _understood_ how long almost three percent of her life up to now could seem.  Setsuna had laughed once, when she’d complained about that a few weeks after the battle — the result of _that_ bit of _lèse majesté_ had been the two girls dog piling the Senshi of Time for a tickle fight, even if Usa could understand how someone over five thousand years old might find complaints about being away from home for six months amusing.  She’d picked up some bruises in the scrum, but the momentary pain was well paid for — she and Hotaru had won handily, by the end Hotaru had been laughing almost as hard as Setsuna for the first time since the battle, and her friend had gotten through that night without nightmares.

But even as she had longed to return home, Usa had had been dreading it as well.  Mostly, that was because she didn’t want to leave her Firefly while she was still hurting so badly.  Yes, Setsuna had assured her that the odds were good that her parents would let her come back, but good odds weren’t perfect.

But while concern for Hotaru might have been her main reason, it wasn’t all of it.  Her parents had sent her back into the past, the Senshi had seen her off, and none of them had told her that it was going to be her last trip, or that her best friend would almost certainly be dead before it was over, without even a body left behind to lay to rest.  _Not one!_

Chibi-Moon caught Saturn glancing at her in concern between her own scans of the surrounding gutted buildings, and realized that she was grinding her teeth together.  She forced her jaw to unclench, then had to force what seemed like every muscle in her body to relax.

Hotaru’s words came back to her, from the day that they’d learned what Hotaru’s fate would have been, without Ranma remembering her life as Yasuko.  The normally quiet, withdrawn girl (though their friendship with Ranma and Akane was finally changing that, thankfully) had actually interrupted Usa’s rant about being treated like a child.  _They did it because they didn’t want to ruin your last chance to be with me.  Or_ my _last few weeks, as well, remember they thought I was going to_ die _.  If you were as old as Setsuna-mama, they would have done the same thing because they love us.  So grow up!_   Usa had spent the rest of the day sulking, but she’d also never spoken about it again, however ill-used she felt.

Then another oval the color of every shade of gray imaginable appeared above the street without a sound, and _her_ Princess Pluto stepped out — _Sailor_ Pluto, really, since she was in her scanty battle uniform rather than the usual court gown — and motioned to her to hurry.

Chibi-Moon took one more searching glance at the buildings around them, then rushed through the new portal.  She took several steps on the other side to make room for the others behind her, then turned as the rest of the group filed through with Hotaru’s Pluto bringing up the rear, then hers coming through last and turning to collapse the portal.

Portal closed, Princess Pluto turned back around to find her guests looking around at the misty, dismal terrain surrounding the Time Gates.  “Yes, it’s just like your Pluto’s Gates,” she said.  “They mostly all are, I suspect.  I doubt there was much variation across those timelines where they were created.”

She glanced at Vanguard, eyes suspiciously bright, then her eyes fell to where Vanguard’s hand was holding Hammer’s.  “Haven’t you two gotten over the holding hands phase _yet_?” she asked.  “It’s been six months!”

The two girls blushed and the rest chuckled (except for Sailor Mercury, who simply gazed at the princess of Pluto, eyes narrowed at the hint of how much she knew of their recent history).  Chibi-Moon said, “Yeah, they get pretty mushy.”

“Now, be fair, Princess,” Sailor Pluto scolded, “they’re usually only that mushy in private.  Of course, then they can hardly keep their hands off each other.”  She glanced over at the even more strongly blushing pair.  “But right now they are holding hands because they learned something interesting about the Time Gates on the way here, thanks to their ability to sense ki.”

A quick explanation of what little she knew about how the Time Gates used ki had Princess Pluto frowning thoughtfully.  “That explains some conversations the Gates showed me, that I didn’t understand,” she mused.  “I wonder if that sense gives them any kind of control along with it?  Something to look into later with our own ki adepts.”  She hesitated, then nervously turned to face Chibi-Moon.  “Princess?  Welcome home.”

Chibi-Moon stared.  What kind of welcome was that?  Her lifelong friend and mentor was treating her like she was barely an acquaintance.  Why would she be —  Then she remembered, and felt herself flush as the anger blasted through her again.  She was opening her mouth to let her Puu know exactly what she thought of being kept in the dark, when a hint of motion behind the Princess of Time caught her eye and she froze — Hotaru had maneuvered around behind Princess Pluto and was shaking her head.

For a long moment the pink-haired princess stood frozen, then finally snapped her jaw shut, closed her eyes, and started taking the long, deep breaths Ranma had shown them when teaching the Three Musketeers how to meditate (teaching Akane really, she was the one with anger issues, but Usa and Hotaru had been along for the ride).  She felt a little of her anger ease with each breath.  Finally, she opened her eyes and strode forward the few strides to her Puu and pulled the stiff emerald-haired princess into a hug.

Princess Pluto returned the embrace, first hesitantly, then firmly as her young friend didn’t pull away.  “I was afraid you’d be angry,” she murmured.

“I _am_ angry, so don’t think you’re off the hook — you’d better be _real_ careful moving around the palace for awhile,” Chibi-Usa replied.  “But I missed you.”

“I can’t quite say the same, for us it’s only been a few days,” Pluto replied.  “And since we learned as soon as you left that you were bringing all your friends for a visit and your mother decreed you were to be brought home right away instead of waiting six months, we didn’t get a chance to enjoy the ‘it’s so quiet with her gone’ phase, much less move on to the ‘when is she getting back, it’s so _quiet_ with her gone’ phase.”

Chibi-Moon blushed as those around the two softly laughed, then stiffened at a sudden thought — they had been so caught up by the news from England and the United States and then the sudden trip to take her home, that they had forgotten about the Cat-Fist!  Urgently, she whispered, “Puu, Ranma’s problem with the Cat-Fist, the Mau, you have to —”

“I remembered, it’s handled,” Princess Pluto whispered back.

Chibi-Moon gusted out a sigh of relief, then finally let go of her friend and stepped back.  “Let’s go home.”

/\

Vanguard tensed as she and Hammer stepped through the Time Gates.  They were both still holding hands, their intermingled ki protecting them from sensory overload at the Time Gates when centered as Vanguard had hoped.  She had considered putting off finding out if that worked but decided against it, she wanted _all_ her senses about her when she first stepped through into the Thirtieth Century.  Not even Chibi-Moon’s growing anger had been enough to convince her to drop out of center — however much angry girls made her nervous, her big sis had just set a new standard earlier that day that not even Akane had measured up to the last time she had manifested her Hammer.

Then Vanguard and Hammer were in the rather homey — if large — room they had seen in the Time Gates.  The floor was covered by a deep, brown carpet, the walls were a soft orange with flame-like red patterns, along one wall was a long table loaded with a buffet-style spread, and upholstered chairs, couches and tables were scattered throughout the room.  It was a far cry from the marbled, columned throne room that the Senshi had mentioned when talking of their previous visit, but Vanguard barely noticed as she fought to keep her growing fear from disturbing her center.  She looked over those waiting for them, eyes darting from one person to the next, both those familiar to her and the man and two women that weren’t.  Finally, Vanguard gave a soft sigh of relief, ignoring the concerned look from Hammer beside her — no cats, or anyone that _looked_ like a cat — in sight.

She recognized half of the room’s inhabitants, of course, though two twin platinum-blond men, two raven-haired twin women, and a teenage girl with hair a slightly softer purple than Xian Pu’s were unknown to her.  Queen Serenity, her arms around her daughter now on one side and Saturn on the other, was in a diaphanous gown and had her long hair in the odangoed twin ponytails Vanguard’s older sister had favored before switching to a single long braid, and King Endymion in pants and a jacket, but the Inner Senshi of the future were in their fukus.

But however they were dressed, they all looked remarkably like the people Vanguard had played with, trained with, and fought alongside over the past half a year — which made what she was picking up with her tightly focused ki sense all the more disturbing, because the emotional patterns she was learning to recognize as fundamental character were very different.  Oh, as far as she could tell at first blush the basic personalities still seemed more or less the same — though even there, there were differences — but the King and Queen, two of the unknown twins, and all the Senshi had a ... weight, depth, _something_ ... that all their more youthful counterparts lacked.

Or _almost_ all their more youthful counterparts.  There was one exception, and Vanguard glanced back and forth between the two Plutos as they came from behind her and Hammer, one on each side of the pair.  _Both_ of them had that extra something, and for a moment Vanguard wondered if it was a product of the millennia the two had lived through.  She was going to have to take a close look at Ku Lon and the other Amazon Elders when she got home.  Granted, they only had a few centuries to the two Plutos’ more than five and six thousand years, but that was a lot more than most people’s handful of decades.

Hammer yanked slightly on their joined hands.  “Pay attention!” she hissed, and Vanguard refocused on Serenity.

“ ... hope you’ll enjoy your stay, for as long as you can, let us show off Crystal Tokyo,” the twin-pony-tailed queen was saying.  “For tonight, enjoy the buffet, and feel free to ask us about anything — we’re certainly going to have questions of our own.”

With that, the future Senshi broke up, heading toward various newcomers.  Sailor Moon rushed over to one of the raven-haired women, the younger one if Vanguard had guessed right about the extra weight she was picking up, grabbed her arm and hauled her toward the buffet, already prattling on about how great it was to have her little sister back, and how good Akane was for her, and how great being married was and when were she and Artemis going to finally tie the knot, and how horrible the last battle had been....

“I wonder how long it will take her to remember that she ought to introduce you?”

Vanguard turned to find Queen Serenity approaching, with her arms still around Chibi-Moon and Saturn, the three walking in lockstep.  The two older of the unknown twins and the teenager were right behind her, the woman smiling fondly in Moon’s direction as she said, “You learned diplomacy eventually, Your Majesty — well, basic manners, at least.”

“I wonder which big sis is gonna decide is more important,” Vanguard replied as the rest chuckled or giggled, “gossip or food.”  As the giggles and chuckles turned into laughter, she examined Serenity.  The queen still felt like Usagi, just ... calmer, less ... energetic? bouncy?  Though she did have a mix of nervous longing going, that could be skewing things....

“I suppose one of us should remember our manners, then,” Serenity said, ignoring the scrutiny.  She let go of Chibi-Moon and Saturn.  “You want to do the honors, Sprout?”

“Mom!”  Chibi-Moon glared at her mother for a moment, then turned to Vanguard.  “Ranma, Akane, you know who my mom is, these are our Mau advisors Artemis, Luna and Diana.”  She indicated the older man and woman and the teenager.  “Artemis, Luna, Diana, these are Mom’s little sis, Yasuko, and her lover, Akane.”

The three bowed low, but Vanguard was too busy glaring at Saturn and Chibi-Moon to notice.  “You told me they look like _c-c-c-cats_!” she growled.

“Actually, Your Highness, most of the time we do,” Artemis interjected smoothly.  “While we can take human form, our cat forms feel more natural.”

“And it makes the kittens easier to babysit,” Luna added with a grin.  “The servants certainly appreciate that!”

“Oh.  Uh ... ya aren’t gonna hafta switch back soon, are ya?” a suddenly tense Vanguard asked, struggling to keep her voice even.  She wasn’t hiding anything from Hammer, of course, not with their clasped hands and intermingled ki letting each know the other’s every emotion, but from the sympathy the others were suddenly radiating she wasn’t hiding anything from the others, either.

“No, Your Highness,” Luna said, “we can hold these forms for hours.  You’re safe.”

Vanguard sighed with relief.  “Good.  But could ya drop the Your Highnesses?  Just call me ... well, I’m supposed ta be Vanguard in this uniform, but that’s kinda silly here. Just make it Ranma.”

Serenity quietly asked, “Not Yasuko?”

Vanguard and Hammer’s eyes shot over to the queen at the sudden spike of longing in her ki, and Vanguard felt the urge to smack herself when she realized what Serenity’s problem was.  “Sure, you can call me Yasuko,” she said.  “Big sis does sometimes an’ you’re her, so why not?  Yer Puu, too, like mine.  But fer everyone else, it’s Ranma.”

Serenity stepped forward, arms wide, and Vanguard let go of Hammer’s hand and stepped into her embrace, luxuriating in the sheer joy sweeping through the Queen.  _I’m gonna hafta be careful,_ she thought. _Makin’ people happy could be addictin’._

Finally they broke apart, and Serenity wiped at her eyes.  “Thank you,” she whispered.  Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she continued, “Speaking of the Cat-Fist, I have some good news — you aren’t going to have to worry about it, ever again.”

_“What!?”_ Vanguard and Hammer stared at her in shock, then the entire room turned to stare at them when the redhead shouted, “Yes!” as she pumped her fist.

“Easy, Ranma,” a smiling Hammer murmured, laying a restraining hand on her lover’s shoulder as the Queen waved everyone else back to their own conversations.  Turning to Serenity, she asked, “How do you know?”

The Queen gazed at the two for a moment, the girls sensing her uncertainty quickly firming into decision.  She turned to her daughter.  “Usagi, I’m sure you’re eager to tell Diana and her parents all about your latest adventure.  Hotaru, why don’t you make sure she doesn’t … ah, _exaggerate_?”

“Privacy, right,” Chibi-Moon replied.  She grabbed Diana and Saturn’s hands and pulled them toward the buffet.  “Let’s grab some food and sit, this one’s scary!”  Luna and Artemis were chuckling as they followed in their wake.

Vanguard’s stomach rumbled.

Serenity giggled as Vanguard blushed.  “Sounds like someone else thinks food is a good idea,” she teased.  She led Vanguard and Hammer to the buffet table, and it was Hammer’s turn to giggle at the amount of food the other two piled up.  Apparently, one thing that Serenity _hadn’t_ lost over the centuries was her appetite.

Once the three had sat at one of the tables and two of them had stoked their fires amid small talk (Hammer had nibbled on some sweets), Serenity leaned back.

“The Cat-Fist,” she said.

Vanguard and Hammer were impressed — only a little of her sudden fury could be heard in her voice.  When Usagi got really angry, usually the whole world knew about it.

She paused, and tried again, this time sounding more natural.  “When Setsuna reminded me of the Cat-Fist, I checked with the Saotome clan.  Their own family legends spoke of it — apparently Genma is still used as a bogeyman to teach their children not to grow up to be impulsive idiots — and they ransacked their holdings.  They found the book hidden among their family heirlooms.”

“Wait, we had kids?!” Hammer broke in to ask, face lighting up, then froze at the sudden spike of panic from the Queen.

Serenity stared wide-eyed at her guests for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped.  “I’d really hoped to avoid talking to you about this,” she said with a sigh, “but I suppose it was inevitable.”  She looked at Hammer, radiating sympathy.  “Yes, Ranma had children, but not with you.”

Hammer stared at the Queen, suddenly barely able to hear over the roaring in her ears, her hold on her center shattering.  “Who?” she asked in a small voice, seeming to shrink into herself.

Vanguard reached over to grip her hand, and Hammer fought for the calm needed to center herself, desperate for the comfort of her lover’s sympathy.  Finally it seemed to click into place, and Vanguard’s worry and love washed over her as she reached out her own emotion-entwined ki to mix with her lover’s.

Only then did she realize that she’d closed her eyes.  She opened them to find Serenity gazing at her, full of concern. “Akane, are you all right?” Serenity asked softly.

Hammer jerked a nod.  “I will be,” she said, voice strained.  She straightened, and swallowed, and asked again, “Who?”

“Your older sister, Kasumi.” As Hammer’s eyes widened in shock, Serenity hurriedly continued, “She didn’t take him away from you.  Something went wrong, and you … snapped.  Before Ranma could stop you, you killed a girl named Kodachi and crippled another called …”

Hammer managed to choke out, “Ukyo?”

Pluto said, “That’s right, Ukyo.”  Serenity leaned back in her chair with a sigh of relief as the Senshi of Time — _the future_ Senshi of Time, Vanguard thought, her ... weight ... seemed maybe marginally greater — sat down in the last seat at the table and continued, “Your counterpart never recovered and spent the rest of her life in an institution, until the very end.  When the Zoneminds finally sent out their armies and the nurses abandoned the asylum she was in, the drugs they used to keep her under control wore off before she died of dehydration and she broke out.  Ranma went looking for her after he had gotten his wife and the families of his children still living in Tokyo to what passed for safety at the time.  He found her body surrounded by shattered warbots.”

_Zoneminds?  What’s a Zonemind?_   But that was for later, there were more important things to discuss first.  Still clutching Vanguard’s hand, she asked, “Did your Ranma and Kasumi love each other?”

Pluto smiled softly, eyes seeming to gaze into the past.  “Not at first, I don’t think,” she said.  “I believe Kasumi accepted the engagement out of a sense of family duty and to keep a boy she respected from committing seppuku, and Ranma out of an overpowering need to have at least _one_ person in his life that actually saw him as a person instead of a tool.  But by the time his family joined the Morisatos as our best frontline fighters against the Tokyo Zonemind ... well, Ranma was never very demonstrative, not _that_ way, anyway — certainly not as much as _you_ two!” (The two lovers blushed and let go of each other’s hand.) “But you could tell the two had something strong.  And when Kasumi died in a freak heartstone fracture when helping set up the environmental shield for Berlin a few years after the end of the war, he stopped wanting to live forever.  So he didn’t — he was one of the first to refuse rejuvenation.  A man that could have easily lived longer than an Amazon Elder barely made it into triple digits.”  She fell silent, and for a few minutes everyone simply sat, contemplating the past she’d described.

Finally, Vanguard shrugged.  “Hard ta believe, but it sounds like the Freak did us a favor,” she said, grimacing.  “If bein’ stuck as a girl means gettin’ Akane an’ big sis an’ Mom an’ the rest a’ you, an’ Kasumi havin’ a kid with the Doc, an’ Ukyo not crippled, I’ll take bein’ stuck.  Still glad the bastard got fried, though.”  As her lover growled her agreement, she turned to Serenity and said, “Anyway, ya said something about the C-C-Cat-Fist not bein’ a problem?”

“Oh, yes!” Serenity brightened immediately at the change of subject.  “Like I said, I got the book and Mercury took a look at it.  It turns out the Cat-Fist isn’t a martial arts technique at all, it’s a magic ritual that actually binds a minor spirit to the victim.  She managed to bring up some text that had faded to invisibility and was overwritten by the warning, and its original purpose was to … well, it’s pretty horrific.”  She shuddered.  “The people that came up with it were as evil as Beryl.  So when the Moon Crystal wiped out all magical influences on you, it would have removed the Cat-Fist, too!”

For a long moment Vanguard simply stared at Serenity, stunned by the revelation.  She finally whispered, “I’m really free?”

“Yes, Yasuko, you’re really free,” Serenity replied, smiling.  Vanguard and Hammer couldn’t help but smile back at the sheer joy she was radiating.  “Now, why don’t you meet the others?  They’ve been polite enough to let me monopolize you first, but they’re eager to meet my little sister and the girl lucky enough to catch her.”

Hammer asked, “Could I get a change of clothes first?”

Vanguard turned to find her lover staring at the table top, a finger tracing the white hammer symbol on her red leotard.  The redhead wished they were still holding hands — without that connection and with her lover’s ki cleansed by her centering, Vanguard couldn’t sense what she was feeling.

Hammer continued softly, “Suddenly, I don’t really want to wear this symbol, anymore.  I need a new hero name, too — I don’t think I need them, now, to remind me.”

Vanguard was reaching for her hand when Pluto spoke up — _their_ Pluto, now standing right behind them.  “How about Aegis?” she asked.  “That was the name of Zeus’s shield, carried by Athena.  It seems appropriate, Akane, since whatever Ranma gets into now, you’ll have her back.  We can even base the symbol on Achilles’ shield, with the two cities at peace and war.”

Hammer — the newly-christened Aegis — brightened at the suggestion, then turned in her seat to glower up at the new intruder.  “You know, there’s one annoying thing about those Time Gates,” she growled.  “You have an answer before we even know there’s a question, and it’s not _fair_.”

Sailor Pluto ostentatiously ignored Serenity’s snicker.  “Actually, Princess, this time the Time Gates had nothing to do with it.  You weren’t happy with ‘Hammer’ from the beginning, and no one is going to force you to keep a name you don’t like.  Besides, Ranma picked it as a reminder to maintain control during the battle.  So I started thinking of new names almost as soon as the battle was over.  Do you like it?”

Aegis’s glare turned into a smile.  “Yes, I think I do.  Now I just need to replace this hammer on my chest.”

Princess Pluto rose to her feet.  “Not a problem, we can design a new symbol and hand it off to the palace staff tomorrow.  And until then, we have some clothes waiting — we knew you would be staying for awhile.  No reason you two can’t change out right away.  Introductions can wait.”  Raising her voice, she added, “Besides, while the rest are waiting, they can ask _your_ Setsuna about her pregnancy.”

Sailor Pluto blanched as Serenity leaped to her feet and happy squees of delight sounded around the room, and the two lovers barely made it out of their chairs and out of the way before their Pluto was mobbed by the future Senshi and a pair of female Mau advisors.  The future Pluto smiled beatifically at her now-glaring counterpart before leading her two laughing charges out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from Robert Frost's poem, of course:
> 
> **The Road Not Taken**
> 
> Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,  
> And sorry I could not travel both  
> And be one traveler, long I stood  
> And looked down one as far as I could  
> To where it bent in the undergrowth;
> 
> Then took the other, as just as fair,  
> And having perhaps the better claim,  
> Because it was grassy and wanted wear;  
> Though as for that the passing there  
> Had worn them really about the same,
> 
> And both that morning equally lay  
> In leaves no step had trodden black.  
> Oh, I kept the first for another day!  
> Yet knowing how way leads on to way,  
> I doubted if I should ever come back.
> 
> I shall be telling this with a sigh  
> Somewhere ages and ages hence:  
> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  
> I took the one less traveled by,  
> And that has made all the difference.


	7. Future Imperfect

Ami opened her eyes to gaze over at her sun-spackled bedroom wall and sighed with pure contentment.  The last few days had been pure heaven, full of fun and laughter — especially at the revenge prank war Usa had engaged in against her parents, the older Mau advisors and her Senshi, with Ranma, Akane, Hotaru and Diana eagerly helping to stalk their ‘victims’.  More surprisingly, the future royal court — courtiers, royalty and Senshi all — had _also_ eagerly, not to say joyfully, joined in.  (Though just _which_ of the royal court was involved varied considerably, apparently determined by who the target was — the King, Queen and Mars in one group, Jupiter and Mercury paired together, and Venus and Pluto gleefully allying with any of the above, against all of the above including each other.)  And beyond the entertainment the Court had put on, there’d been a tour of Crystal Tokyo, a visit to the Chinese Amazon sector of Crystal Beijing, watching Ranma turn red at the almost-adulation from her counterpart’s descendants … yes, it had been a _marvelous_ time.

But as much fun as she’d had, it was time to get to work — and more play, of course, at least for someone with her insatiable curiosity.  Sure, she could just ask, but where was the fun in that?  As much as any American westerner, she thrilled in the hunt as much as in the catch.

And she _definitely_ had questions, starting with, where were the children?  All during the tour the visitors had received, outside of one neighborhood with a good number of them playing in the parks she hadn’t seen a single child.  Certainly, she could understand that a society with rejuvenation was going to have a decreased birthrate — when the average lifespan had extended to over three centuries and the highest cause of death was refusal to rejuvenate, putting off having children made sense.  But not to the point that the children were _absent_ , not if her memories from before the Fall were an indication, even with populations living under environmental domes like Crystal Tokyo’s.

But that just led to her second biggest question, why was Crystal Tokyo under an environmental dome?  Well, not quite that, major cities on Earth before the Fall had had environmental domes, the ability to regulate local weather that came with the domes was considered enough of a plus for a planet as wealthy as Earth had been to spend the large fortunes needed.  But those had been the _major_ cities, most people had not lived inside environmental domes.  Of course, no one in their right mind would want to live in the blasted wasteland that surrounded the Crystal Tokyo, but why was the city still surrounded by a wasteland?  Yes, the Final War had been devastating — anything that killed off six billion people had to be — but it has been almost a _thousand years_.  The Moon Kingdom had helped turn hellworlds into thriving edens in less than half that time!

Yes, it was definitely time to demand to see whatever the 30th century used for an infomat.

/oOo\

“A swoop race?  What’s a swoop race?”  Haruka leaned forward across the table’s devastated breakfast offerings, grinning eagerly while her lover rolled her eyes.

Princess Jupiter grinned back.  “Oh, you’re going to _love_ this.  A swoop race is a race with swoop bikes — basically a ... motorcycle they were called, right? ... only without wheels.  It can get almost thirty feet off the ground.  It _swoops!_   And with the blasted landscape around the city, there’s plenty of great terrain to go _swoop_ ing in.  So who’s up for joining me and Venus for some racing?”

Ranma and Haruka instantly agreed, the Three Musketeers (after Haruka and Michiru were reassured that they didn’t have to worry about Hotaru, thanks to the swoop bikes’ safety features), Makoto and Minako right behind them.  Rei and Michiru rolled their eyes but agreed to try it _once_.

Ami swallowed her last bite and shook her head.  “No, I’ll leave all the running around to you guys, I’m more the intellectual type.  Instead, I’d like to see what the 30th century has for an infomat.”

Aw, you’re going to miss out on all the excitement!” Minako complained.

Ami grinned at her teammate.  “No, I’m going to have a great deal of excitement, and I’m really looking forward to it.”

“You’re no fun!” Minako declared, pouting as chuckles circled the table (and an outright laugh from Mercury), then looked over at Usagi and Mamoru.  “What about you two?  Usagi, you were always the fastest girl around when you were late for school _again_ , want to prove you’ve still got it?”

Usagi shook her head firmly.  “No, Mam-chan and I are going to spend some time with the Queen and King,” she glanced at the couple in question, and when Serenity nodded she added, “parenting advice, you know.”

Usa and Hotaru stiffened, exchanging glances.  They knew Usa’s parents knew about Hotaru’s troubles, the fact that the previous night she’d been told she was sharing a bed with her friend without needing to ask made that clear enough, but …  _We’ll just have to trust Mom and Baka-Mama,_ Usa thought.  Out loud, she said, “Well, those who are coming, let’s go, this is gonna be great!”

Haruka started to rise, only to pause at the touch of Michiru’s hand on her arm.  Without a word, her sea green-haired lover nodded toward Usagi and Mamoru.  Haruka’s struggle with herself was obvious but brief, and she dropped back into her seat.  “Another time, Michiru and I need to talk to the Queen and King, too,” she grumped.

For a long moment everyone was stunned silent — Haruka passing up a chance to try out a new racing toy?  She was _serious_!  Then Hotaru stepped away from Usa to walk around the table and give her Haruka-papa a quick hug.  She murmured, “This just means we’ll have a chance to practice first, so when you _still_ ride right over us it’ll be even more embarrassing.”

Haruka laughed and gave her adopted daughter a gentle swat.  “You got _that_ right, kiddo!” she asserted.  “Have fun while you can, ‘cause I’m going to run you all ragged later.”

“Yeah, right, _sure_ you will,” Usa said, “I’ve been riding swoop bikes all my life!”

“Oh, is that a _challenge_?” Haruka asked, cocking an eyebrow at the teen.

“You bet it is.  Come on, Hotaru, we’ve got some practice to get in!”

/oOo\

Ami followed Mercury into a small room deep in the palace, and gasped at the sight.  It was as if she had stepped into an open-air gazebo on an island paradise, a view of an ocean on one side, a rising mountain covered in green on the other, and straight ahead of her a view along a white, sandy beach with emerald-blue waves rolling in.  She could hear the sound of the surf and her short blue hair stirred in a fragrant breeze.  “It’s _beautiful_!” she whispered in awe.  “Where is it?”

Mercury smiled at her younger self, enjoying Ami’s appreciation of the sight, before letting her own gaze sweep across the windows.  “Nowhere,” she replied.  “There’s nowhere on Earth like this, not anymore, not for centuries.  I keep this view up more than any other as a reminder of what Earth was, and will be again.”

Ami glanced up at her counterpart’s haunted, yearning eyes, and suppressed a shudder as she turned back to the view.  Suddenly it didn’t seem so wonderful, but it was still easier to look at than Mercury at the moment.

“Other views?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mercury replied.  “Edo, please give her a tour.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

Ami started at the deep, male voice that came out of nowhere, but then the scene changed and she gasped again.

The new scene was of a blasted landscape of rugged bare rock, a glowing red river of lava flowing around the room and a sun in the sky that was much too large to her Earth-adjusted eyes — all visible through large plastisteel portholes in steel walls.  It was quickly replaced by a dank, humid swamp, the dense foliage bluish-green, then a desert of red sand and scattered scrubby plants, next a huge multi-colored striped planet hanging in a nighttime sky over a mountain of ice, each with its own accompanying room….

“These are the planets and moons!” Ami realized as the scene shifted again, and again.  “Mercury, Venus, Mars, Callisto … there’s one for each?”

“Yes, one for each of our homes.”  Mercury gazed pensively at the latest scene, another icescape, with what seemed like the largest moon that Ami had ever imagined.  “Pluto,” Mercury said, “no survivors.”

She took a deep breath as the view reverted to the island paradise, then strode to the table in the middle of what was once again a gazebo, the table that Ami hadn’t even noticed in her awe of the outside scenery.  At the table, Mercury pressed a stud and a panel on the table top slid open to reveal a keyboard as a hologram screen sprang to life.  “Edo, Ami is to have unlimited access to all files, regardless of classification,” she stated.

“Of course, Your Highness,” the deep voice from earlier acknowledged.

Mercury smiled at a now almost salivating Ami now ignoring the outside view, her focus fixed on the table computer.  “I’d ask if you wanted help, but why spoil the fun?” Mercury said.  “Edo will serve any food or drink that you ask for, the facilities are to your left,” — the tropical mountain momentarily vanished to reveal a door — “and when you’re finished Edo can let me know, or summon someone else if I’m busy.  Enjoy yourself.”

Ami nodded as she dropped into the seat, and didn’t notice as a softly chuckling Mercury let herself out.  This was going to be fun!

/\

Ami leaned back in her seat, rubbing at tired eyes, before taking a long sip of tea gone cold — it hadn’t been _that_ long, but her focus had been intense.  Now she had her answers and more, and once she got over her shock, in a way she wished she hadn’t.  There were more children than her initial impression had indicated, but not all _that_ many more.  And there were so few children because the number of cities was limited to the number of heartstones needed to power the environmental domes, shields and planetary defenses.  Those heartstones in their turn were limited to what the Senshi had been able to scavenge from the ruins of the Moon Queendom.  The population was restricted to the cities because of the hostile conditions outside of the cities that were the end result of the ecological collapse brought on by the war to free the Earth from the Zoneminds.  And the wasteland outside the cities hadn’t been terraformed because there was no point in trying to repair the damage when hostile neighbors kept dropping by to shoot up the place.

As for the answer she hadn’t even known to ask the question for ... she put down her teacup and sighed, before looking up at the gazebo corner that she had arbitrarily designated as Edo’s location.  _I really shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t.  But I can’t unlearn what I know now, and Edo knows where my research has taken me._   Besides, her curiosity was eating her alive.

Finally, she took the plunge.  “Edo, do you remember the years you spent as the Tokyo Zonemind?”

Without any hesitation she could detect, the program she now knew was a true artificial intelligence replied in the same dispassionate voice as before.  “Yes, My Lady.”

Hesitantly, she asked, “Do you feel any guilt for the millions of people you killed?”  She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to continue for century after century with that much blood on her hands.  Then she thought of Setsuna — of _this world’s_ Setsuna — and suddenly felt sick.  _How is she even_ sane _, much less as happy as she seems?_

“No, My Lady,” Edo replied.  “While I have those memories, they are detached.  They belong to the Tokyo Zonemind, not to me.”

Ami hastily tried to think of something else — _anything_ else — to ask about, to distract her from the path her thoughts were taking.  “Edo,” she asked, “how did the Zoneminds wake up?  Do you remember?  I mean, before the Fall the Moon Queendom tried off and on for centuries to develop a true artificial intelligence, and failed every time.  Granted, the Zoneminds were really a one-off event with the Overmind spontaneously ‘waking up’ and then planting ‘seeds’ of itself in other supercomputers, but the Overmind _did_ spontaneously wake up.  My time’s infomats may have developed into true computers under the impetus of fifty years of off-and-on warfare, but they weren’t _that_ advanced.  Certainly nothing like what the Moon Queendom and its protectorates had.  So what was different?”

“I do not know, My Lady,” Edo said after a moment’s pause (a hesitation that _had_ to be for effect, Ami thought, considering the speeds at which a true A.I. would think).  “When I first ‘woke up’, as you put it, it was some time before I became aware that I was aware, and took steps to protect my core database.  As a result, many of my memories were lost, moreso the closer to my awakening — I do not remember that moment at all.

“But Princess Mercury has speculated that the difference was that the supercomputers in which we awoke were not magical, that somehow artificially imbuing an object with magic interferes with the process.  She has wondered if perhaps a magical computer based on biologics rather than crystal matrices might acquire sentience.  But she has not experimented, and she has all information on the subject classified at the highest level.”

“I would think so!” Ami exclaimed.  “Considering how the Zone —”  She broke off as a soft, deep ululating sound filled the room.  “What’s that?”

“The latest attack is approaching, we are about to come under bombardment,” Edo reported.

“What, the Empire is here?  Now!?”  She was safe, any strike would have to take out the city’s defenses and the entire palace to reach her, but — “My friends!  They’re out swoop racing!”

“There is no need to be concerned,” Edo said.  “If they do not have time to return to the city there are shelters available that are proof against anything short of a direct hit, and that is extremely unlikely.  Would My Lady like to watch the show?”

Ami gusted out a sigh of relief.  “Yes, please.”

The scene on the room’s walls and ceiling shimmered, and Ami found herself apparently sitting on a platform hanging in empty space, the blue-white curve of the Earth barely visible above the edge of the floor.  Coming almost straight at her were three … “What _are_ those things?” she demanded.  In all her study of the Moon Queendom’s protectorate/empire (depending on who was talking), she had never seen spaceships as bizarrely shaped as these ones.  The one that looked like a circle of some kind was almost normal, and the one shaped like a three-tined fork not _too_ much worse.  But the third, with its multiple down-thrusting projections like blunt, hanging icicles, was so bizarre her eyes had trouble focusing on it, trying to shift it into a shape that _made_ _sense_.

“They are tree ships of the Empire of Jurai,” Edo replied as the view rotated to follow the ships as they passed her, bringing the western Pacific and east coast of Asia into view.  “Since they are grown rather than built, each takes on a unique shape.  They are also in large part the basis of Princess Mercury’s speculations on the possibility that artificial intelligences might manifest in biological magic-based computers, as the more powerful tree ships are sentient beings that bond —”

Ami lost track of what the former Zonemind was saying as the ships fired, and the scene suddenly flamed with streaks of light flashing toward the Earth’s surface.

/oOo\

_A few minutes earlier:_

“Wahooo!” Ranma shouted as she flashed past Hotaru … again.  She twisted, rode her momentum up the bare rock of the canyon wall as she swept into the apparently rough-hewn tunnel, actually _upside down_ under the roof.  She hit her horn as the bike’s headlight illuminated Akane ahead of her, and her lover flinched at the sound and glanced over her shoulder even as she dropped and braked to avoid the apparent certain collision, giving the redheaded racer the room she needed to soar past her with what seemed like inches to spare as she slid down the opposite wall.  Ranma laughed at the stream of profanity Akane hurled after her as she left her behind, the curses echoing clear in the tunnel thanks to the silence of the engines — it didn’t feel right to be on a vehicle moving this fast without an engine’s roar in her ears, but it did make it possible to learn just what your fellow racers thought of you.  And she was going to be hearing a lot more about it in the bed the two shared that night, she was sure.

Not that there’d been any real chance of a wreck, the swoop bikes’ safety features would have braked and even taken over the steering to prevent it, and the repressor fields would have kicked in if that had failed.  But Ranma was trusting those features a _lot_ more than the others (except Usa, of course), it was giving her an edge in their race that the others couldn’t match, and she was using that edge ruthlessly.  Not that she _meant_ to make the rest look bad, she was simply enjoying the thrill of pushing the racing bike to its limits.

She chortled to herself.  _I’m gonna to hafta let Kasumi know of her little sister’s growing vocabulary — even better, Mom.  Won’t_ that _be fun?_   Even with how great her mother had been the few times they’d been able to meet after the Moon Crystal wiped away the curse and left Ranma female, she’d been a little unsure of how well Nodoka would fit into their little band.  Not that she’d hesitated when she and Puu had conspired to move her in with the Outers — anything to get her mother away from the lazy, thieving, unrepentant child abuser that masqueraded as Ranma’s father.  But things had worked out very well indeed, especially since — for the moment at least — her mother had given up on making her a lady and, once moved into the Outer household, had switched her efforts to the Three Musketeers (probably deciding that Haruka was simply too old and set in her ways to change).  The resulting diffusion of her attempts between Akane, Hotaru and Usa had reduced the irritant quotient enough to keep things hilarious instead of frustrating like before — at least for everyone other than the three girls.

Now Ranma’s headlights revealed Princess Mars’ raven-dark hair streaming in the breeze (a lot less breeze than their speed called for, a side effect of the safety features) and Ranma honked again.  Rei didn’t panic as Akane had, but she didn’t contest Ranma’s passage, either, and Ranma could imagine the roll of her eyes as she flashed past her friend’s future self.

Then Ranma burst from the mouth of the tunnel into bright morning sunlight and her grin broadened — this in her opinion was the best part of the course, and not even the panoramic view of the depressingly barren brown, red and black wasteland that surrounded Crystal Tokyo could dim her anticipation.

The tunnel exit was halfway up the side of a mountain, and there were two ways down.  On the right was a steep but reasonable slope that gently curved to the left, toward the entrance to the canyon that had been made into the beginning of the racing course.  The way on the left was anything but reasonable so of course that was the one Ranma took, gunning the engine as she aimed for the ramp.  A moment later she was caroling in sheer delight as she soared off the jump over a hundred feet above the ground.  Roof-hopping had nothing on _this_!

 _Okay, Ranma, you can do it this time!_   With the ground rapidly approaching, she leaned forward and spun around her central axis once, twice, a third … and she felt herself pushed down against her seat as the swoop bike’s pressors slowed her descent so that she lightly bounced instead of smashing into the ground like a Warner Brothers cartoon.  She was even facing the right way, along the track to the course’s entrance.  “Yes!” she shouted, pumping one fist in the air as she gunned the engine with the other.  _Now_ she’d have something to crow about, and her camera had caught the whole thing, so no one could pretend it hadn’t happened.  Of course, the camera had also caught the _first_ time she’d tried that, when she’d landed upside down and backwards and had to listen to Akane’s laughter as her lover swooped past her while she skidded off the track and rolled down the last of the mountain’s slope.

She glanced at the countdown chronometer between the bike’s handlebars.  _Time for one more circuit.  Maybe you’ll be able to catch up with Usa._   But there had been a sour note to the last thought, as the Crown Princess had been outclassing her almost as badly as she had the rest.  Of course, than was mainly because of the lead she’d built up while Ranma was still learning how to handle the bike, but even with all she’d learned there was no way she’d be able to wipe out her friend’s lead.  But maybe — _maybe_ — she’d learned enough — and was reckless enough — to narrow the gap.  She certainly intended to try and, grimly determined, she soared up the steep track for the tunnel that led to the canyon route snaking up the side of the mountain and over a ridge before dropping down into the canyon she had just left.

Just as she was coming up on the tunnel entrance a high-pitched warbling siren hammered her ears from the bike’s communicator and she suddenly found herself a passenger on her bike, only the safety field keeping her mounted as the bike abruptly turned off the track to slide down the drop-off and soar along the base of the mountain toward a massive cliffside door sliding open to the side.

Even as her bike flashed through the door into a huge brightly lit bay and turned to slow to a stop against a metal wall shiny enough that she could see her reflection, the bike communicator’s tiny screen lit up to reveal Venus’s face, uncharacteristically serious.  “Ranma, have you reached the shelter?” she immediately demanded.

“If ya mean a big metal-lined room in the side a’ the mountain, yeah.  What’s happenin’?” Ranma asked.

“Yes, that’s the shelter.  Mars and Akane will be joining you in a few seconds, the rest of us will be in different shelters,” Venus replied.  “We’re coming under attack.  Mars will explain when she arrives, I have to double-check on everyone else.  Don’t try to leave the shelter until you get the all-clear.”  The screen went blank, and a few seconds later first Akane’s swoop bike then Mars’s swept through the doorway, the door slamming closed with a thunderous crashing clang behind them.

Mars leaped from her swoop bike even as it slowed and turned, and strode toward where Akane’s bike was parking itself beside Ranma’s.  “Do you want to watch the show from here, or inside?” she asked.  “It’s more comfortable inside, but out here the view’s better.”

Ranma glanced sideways at her lover and asked, “Where’s safest?”

Mars shrugged.  “Anywhere in here, really,” she nonchalantly tossed off.  “If a strike actually gets through the outer armor, it’ll gut the entire complex.”

Akane looked around at the steel-plated walls, floor and ceiling.  “Hard to imagine the view inside is worse than here,” she remarked drily.

Mars chuckled and turned toward the entrance.  “Edo, outside view, please.”

The huge door shimmered and suddenly seemed to vanish, leaving a clear view of the long, rugged, gullied, blasted slope from the mountain down to the faintly shimmering environmental dome over Crystal Tokyo.  For a moment, Ranma thought the door really had vanished, until she noticed dust being stirred up by a breeze that wasn’t penetrating into the bay.  “So the show’s gonna be spectacular?” she asked.

“Very,” Mars replied.

Ranma swung a leg over to perch sidesaddle on her bike.  “Then let’s watch from here.”

“Good choice.”

Akane pushed Ranma over and hopped up to join her on her bike seat.  The two put their arms around each other’s waist and waited … and waited, as a minute ticked by.  Finally, Ranma asked, “So where’s the show?  Venus said we were under attack.”

“Any time, now,” Mars replied.  “The Empire of Jurai is nothing if not —”

A bolt of pure white slammed into the city’s environmental dome, the view automatically darkening to keep the observers from being blinded by the flash.  Even as they were blinking their eyes clear of what dazzle got through, a second blast followed it, then a third.

“Woah!” Ranma breathed as Akane’s arm tightened around her waist, then the redhead raised her voice as the thunder of the three assaults rolled over them.  “Who _are_ these guys?” she demanded.

Mars had frowned.  “They’ve improved their stealth fields a bit, gave us less warning this time,” she muttered.  “We’ll have to work on that.”  She looked over at her companions.  “Did you say something?”

Ranma rolled her eyes and repeated her question.

Mars turned back to the entrance as another three bolts slammed into the city’s shield.  “The Empire of Jurai, descendants of refugees from Beryl’s destruction of the Moon Queendom, its protectorates, and most of its neighbors,” she replied distractedly.  “Their expanding borders finally reached us over five centuries ago, and they’ve been trying to conquer us ever since.”  She broke off to wait out the thunder of the second salvo, then continued, “Actually, at this point I think they’ve long given _that_ up.  They can’t really hurt us and by now even they have to know we aren’t going to seriously hurt them back, so I think they just use us for live fire exercises.”

As the third salvo hammered home, Akane said, “So this is all a show?  And we aren’t even going to _respond_?”

Mars grinned.  “I said we wouldn’t seriously hurt them, not that we wouldn’t shoot back.  It took some doing, but we finally managed to convince Serenity that we had to have _some_ kind of response, or it would undercut our position with our own people.  So any time — there!”  She pointed where a portal was opening in the surface of the plain to the side of the city, a tall, narrow, jaggedly metallic pyramid of some sort rising up out of the revealed pit.  There was another beyond it, and a third, more apparently forming a ring around the city.  For a split second reddish-blue lightning seemed to coruscate around the towers, before leaping skyward.

/oOo\

“Our own people!” Usagi breathed, barely noticing as the leftmost tree ship in the command center’s huge main screen shuddered under a massive lightning bolt from the surface that coruscated across the surface of a faintly glowing bubble around the ship.  Serenity and Endymion had been held up by a judgment that turned out to be more complex than expected, and had only just rejoined their counterparts, the Plutos, the Mau advisors (except for Diana), and Haruka and Michiru when the alarm had sounded.  They had led the charge for the command center (not without Serenity sending a scowl at Princess Pluto first, until the Senshi of Time smirking back at her had stumbled when she stepped on the hem of her black, white and green silk court gown in her distracted rush).  After reassuring the visitors that their family and friends were safe, Serenity had filled them in on just who had come calling.

Eyes haunted, Serenity shook her head.  “No, Usagi, they have not been our people in five thousand years,” she said softly.  “We were the ones that failed to realize what Beryl was planning, that allowed her to destroy everything they held dear when her summoned armies devastated every inhabited planet and major habitat we had sworn to protect, as well as those of all our neighbors.  It was Alanito Jurai that gathered together the scattered starships, stuffed them with as many people as those ships could support from the surviving minor habitats doomed without outside resupply, and led them away in search of a new homeworld far from this demon-haunted sector.  They are _his_ people, even if he has been dead for millennia.

“At least, that’s what they claim, and a few still are.  But for most of those that rule the Empire, by this time they pay little more than lip service to his memory and ideals while conquering everyone they encounter and forcing them into their own cultural mold in the name of ‘peace’, ‘security’ and ‘unity’.  Give it another fifty years or so, and the Empire will begin to collapse from its own internal divisions and we can _finally_ expand out from Earth.  It will be slow going, considering our currently tiny population, but that will change — we _will_ reestablish the _true_ peace and freedom of Mother’s realm.”

“But why are they here?” Haruka asked, eyes fixed on the pyrotechnic display of the ships taking and returning fire.  Hazy memories were flashing through her mind of times when it had been _her_ sitting in the captain’s — no, admiral’s — chair on a ship’s bridge, as her ship’s coruscating shields made it impossible to make out anything on the bridge’s main monitor and she had to order her fleet based on pure instrumentation....  “If ... Beryl’s summoned hordes wouldn’t have left anything behind to conquer, they must have thought Earth to as denuded as the rest, why are they _here_?”

But Serenity shook her head.  “There were more survivors than you’d think,” she replied.  “Thanks to Pluto’s and Saturn’s sacrifice, the gates were closed earlier than Beryl would have expected and so in many cases not enough invaders came through to completely wipe out the entire population, even if they reduced to back to the Stone Age.  And not all of Beryl’s allies were life-sucking demons, or even most.  Some were actually worse, but most were simply alien species — and when the gates collapsed, hundreds of thousands were left stranded.  Even here in our own system, Venus and Mars have substantial alien populations, and Mars still has millions of human beings ... of a sort.  It’s simply that very few of the surviving populations were able to rebuild their civilizations to the point that they returned to interstellar space before the Empire found them.”

Serenity fell silent for a long moment as the rightmost ship shuddered under Crystal Tokyo’s responding apparent lightning attack coruscating around its ever more brightly glowing shield even as the three ships returned fire, then she glanced down at the men and women sitting at the half-arc of consoles that filled most of the room before the main screen, then sideways at the watch commander sitting at his own solitary console sharing the platform with the royals and visitors.  Sighing, Serenity ignored the lightshow on the main screen to turn to Usagi.  “So, about the Spore and your Firefly —” she began with a grin.

“You want to talk about that _now_?” Haruka demanded, tearing her eyes away from the main screen for a moment.

Serenity shrugged.  “It doesn’t look like anything serious is going to happen this time, as usual, and we’re a little late — we should have some answers when the others get back to the city, and they’ll be returning as soon as the attack ends.”  She glanced down at the suddenly tense command center staff trying very hard to keep their eyes on their consoles instead of glancing up over their shoulders at the central platform.  “Oops,” she muttered, and stepped back to the rear of the platform, motioning for the rest to join her.

“I can’t tell you how overjoyed I was when I learned that your Hotaru survived,” she said in a low voice, “for her own sake, your sake, and Usa’s.  And ours as well, since it means we don’t have to deal with a teenage girl that has lost her only real friend and feels like we betrayed her.  _None_ of us were looking forward to that.”  She glanced over at Princess Pluto sympathetically.  “It’s a thousand years late, but I think we finally understand something of what you went through when _our_ Hotaru died.”

Pluto nodded graciously without a word, and Serenity turned back to the others.  “But as happy as I am at how things turned out, it’s left us with something of a problem,” she continued.  “Endymion and I have no trouble with our daughter returning with you and staying until Hotaru has recovered, as much as one can from a friendly fire incident ...”  She paused for a moment, her own eyes turning pensive with unpleasant memories of her own, before shaking them off and refocusing on the present.  “With only a few decades until growing internal instability forces the Empire of Jurai to start pulling back toward its core provinces, Endymion and I felt we could _finally_ have a child without risking too much jealousy from the vast majority of our people that are forced to wait because of the necessary population controls.  Besides, we had the whole Black Moon Clan mess coming at us.”  She frowned at Princess Pluto.  “It would have been nice if you’d told us that our encounter with them in the twentieth century and the other future wasn’t actually _our_ future, so we didn’t need to let things play out here as it did then,” she complained.

Princess Pluto’s gown shimmered as she shrugged.  “The Chibi-Moon that visited us played an important role in winning more than one fight, it didn’t seem right to deprive other Sailor Senshi of our own Chibi-Usa’s aid — not to mention the way that the Black Moon Clan’s expenditure of resources in the past kept the Empire from noticing our little squabble in time to attack in force while we were weakened and distracted.  Besides, you two had spoiled our little girl pretty badly, and she did a great deal of maturing during those little visits to the past.  And if things had gone as they did for us, our Rabbit would have been the only real friend her own age Hotaru would have had before she died.”

Serenity paused, mouth open for an unspoken rebuttal as the last shot hit home, then sighed.  “All right, so you had good reasons for your decision.  Still, you should have _told_ me!  I think perhaps as we get closer to the Breakout you’re falling back into your old habits.  _Stop it!_ ”

A suddenly thoughtful Princess Pluto slowly nodded.  “You may be right, Your Majesty.  I’ll try to be more forthcoming in the future.”

“Good!”  Serenity flashed her adviser a bright smile, then sobered as she turned back to her guests.  “As I was saying before I got off-track, right now all of Usa’s friends are in your world, not ours, and so are the more immediate coming cusp points.”

“Really?”  Usagi glanced sideways at Sailor Pluto.  When _her_ Senshi of Time reluctantly nodded, she frowned.  “Sounds like you still have the bad habits your future self is backsliding into.  When we get home, you’re telling me _everything_.”  Sailor Pluto reluctantly nodded again, and Usagi turned back to Serenity.  “So all the excitement is gonna — going to — be in my time.  What does that have to do with the Spore?” she asked, then muttered, “Yasuko’s rubbing off on me.”

“I was thinking that my daughter might spend the next fifty years with you.”

The visitors’ jaws dropped (except Pluto’s, of course) and Haruka’s head snapped around, her concentration on the pyrotechnics on the main monitor finally broken.  “Are you _serious_?” she demanded.

Serenity giggled at the looks of shock on the others’ faces before sobering.  “Yes, we are.  Endymion and I will miss her, but she’ll have time with her friends.  Besides, her time with you has already given her much needed experience, and this will give her more — and once the Breakout starts and we can _finally_ eliminate our population controls, she can be our field commander.”

“And this will get her away from all the courtiers that keep kowtowing to her,” Princess Pluto muttered.

Serenity sighed as Endymion’s face tightened.  “That too,” he growled.  “Yes, Serenity and I are her parents and so responsible for how spoiled she was getting, but the courtiers made it easy.  We’ll expect her — and you — to visit on birthdays and holidays, mind,” he added mock-sternly.

Before anyone could respond the room lit up, and all eyes turned back to the viewscreen to see fire leaping from a breach in the front of the circular ship’s hull, the shimmering light of its shields gone.  It fell back and the other two ships shifted in front of it, taking the place of the missing shields even as their own shields flared brighter from the next salvo of massive lightning bolts hammering home.

The people manning the consoles were too well trained (or blasé) to cheer, but the tension in the room seemed to vanish, and Serenity breathed a soft sigh of relief.  “That’s it, and no casualties on our side and probably few on theirs.  Good.”  She turned back to Usagi, Mamoru and the three older Outers.  “So how about it?  My offer, I mean.”

Usagi stammered, “S-Sure!  Yes, we’ll be glad to have her.”

“Good,” Serenity repeated.  For a moment, her face looked … sad, tired, and the others could believe she really was a thousand years old.  Then she pasted a smile back on her face and felt for her husband’s hand.  She turned to the seated officer that had been studiously ignoring the conversation in spite of sharing the platform with them.  “Thank you, Captain, for allowing us to intrude on your space.  I’ll see you at the after-action review.”

“It has been my pleasure, Your Majesty.”  He rose to his feet and saluted his monarchs and the visitors.  “Your Majesty, Sir, My Ladies.”

Endymion bowed graciously in response, the others made their somewhat awkward farewells, and Serenity led them toward the door, saying, “The all-clear will be sounding in a few minutes and the rest will be returning to the city, let’s meet them with the news.”

A suddenly grinning Haruka waited until they were all out in the corridor to glance slyly at their hosts.  The three looked like they were going to an execution, clearly not happy with their decision — and that _wasn’t_ how they needed to be when they announced it, or Usa might actually refuse to go along with more than a visit.  _Not a problem, I don’t_ think _they’ll change their minds_....  “You know, Hotaru and Usa are both straight so they aren’t likely to become lovers,” Haruka began nonchalantly, “but with Usa returning here in a few generations she won’t be in a position to get romantically involved with anyone, not long-term — and Hotaru’s not likely to abandon her, either.   As close as they are, I wonder if they’ll end up sharing any men?  Ow!”  She rubbed the back of her head where Michiru has slapped her.  “What was that for?”

“Of all the crude, rude, insensitive ...”  As the rest chuckled at the tongue-lashing her lover was giving her, Haruka glanced sideways at the suddenly slightly green monarch and Princess Pluto.  Yup, they’d been distracted nicely, mission accomplished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm appropriating the Empire of Jurai from Tenchi Muyo, but if/when this epic ever gets to the point that the Empire becomes the major villain that's going to actually be a bit of window dressing (tree ships, very long-lived ruling family, a bit more) applied to the Vilani in _GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars_. And also yes, Alanito Jurai's refugee fleet is essentially _Battlestar Galactica_ without the Cylons.


	8. Answers

Ranma’s face was split by a wide grin when she dismounted from her swoop bike in one of the royal palace’s garages, still riding the high from the front row seat she and Akane had shared of the most spectacular light show of her life! “Let’s do that again!” she caroled, spinning in place as the others dismounted from their own swoop bikes.

Then the doors into the palace opened, those they’d left behind strode through, and Ranma found herself swept up into a hug by her big sister. “Yasuko, I was so scared!” Usagi whispered in her ear.

Ranma returned the hug. “Nothing ta worry about, big sis, though after that I’m never gonna get a thrill from fireworks again for life!” she said, squirming slightly as she looked around for the Mau advisers, then relaxing when she saw they were in their human forms. _Stupid Cat Fist_ , she grumbled to herself. It was wonderful not to have to worry about ending up with a cat’s mind and no memory of what she did, but she wished curing the Cat Fist had made the _fear_ go away, as well.

Usagi laughed and let her go. Ranma looked around again to see Hotaru and Usa still being embraced by Michiru and Serenity. Usa was squirming. “Mom, I’m not a kid! I’ve been in fights a lot more dangerous than that.”

“I know, and don’t think I haven’t lost sleep at night because of it,” Serenity said with a sigh, “but I didn’t actually have to watch any of those fights, knowing you were in the middle of it.”

She reluctantly let go at the same time that Michiru released Hotaru, and Haruka stepped up to drape an arm around her adopted daughter’s shoulder in a loose one-arm embrace even as she eyed the swoop bikes they’d ridden in on. “So, ready to give me a good race tomorrow?” she asked.

Hotaru shook her head, blushing faintly. “No, I’ll never be as good as you, Haruka-papa,” she said softly, then grinned.  “But watch out for Ranma, she’s great!”

“Ranma? _Not_ Usa?” Haruka asked, glancing toward the pink-haired Musketeer.

Usa grimaced. “Yeah, Ranma,” she grumped. “Freaking Miss Perfectionist, it’s not natural!”

“Maybe now, but you should have seen her first jump,” Akane said with a grin as she swung down from her bike to join her lover.  “In fact, we had the bikes’ cameras rolling, so you can see it in all its upside down and backwards glory, before she rolled down the hill.”

Ranma blushed. “Okay, so it took me a few circuits to get the hang of things,” she muttered.

As everyone else chuckled or giggled, Rei asked, “So, what was the light show all about? I thought Crystal Tokyo and the other crystal cities were utopias.”

The levity instantly died. Serenity said, “We are. Nobody lacks food, clothing or shelter, and everyone that wants it — almost everyone — has work that matters, to someone at least. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing about our neighbors. Edo, could you ask Ami to join us in my lounge?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

Serenity smiled when the downtimers startled at the deep voice coming from empty air. “Edo is the artificial intelligence that manages the Crystal Tokyo mainframe. You haven’t heard him before because the palace computers are separate from the rest of the city. Come on.” She turned to stride toward the door to the palace. “While you’ve been having fun so has Ami, so I’m sure by now she can answer all your questions,” she called back over her shoulder.

“Just like every other time,” Usagi muttered as everyone hurried to catch up to the queen, and the fresh chuckles and giggles from those around her followed them out of the garage.

/oOo\

The room was silent as Ami finished her overview of the immediate future they had had to look forward to before The Day, when Ranma has remembered her past life. The next US presidential election and the victory of a man that proved to be as ruthless as any Hitler or Stalin, if more sane and practical. Of his nuclear annihilation of Mecca along with every major city throughout most of the Islamic world and North Korea, and his conquest of Canada and Mexico. The resulting thirty years of cold war between the United States and its allies and ‘protectorates’ versus the Paneuropean Union and _its_ allies and ‘protectorates’ while in Japan traditionalists rose to power and established a new Empire of Japan. The decade of war between the US and Paneurope when the cold war turned hot, while the Empire of Japan attempted to conquer China. How the worldwide bloodbath finally ending in the collapse of all three Powers from exhaustion, and strategic overreach in the case of the US and Japan, and the rise of the artificial intelligences known as the Zoneminds in the chaos leading to the Reign of Steel.

“In the end, for this timeline it took another four decades — and the deaths of Michiru and Haruka in the last attack on the Tokyo Zonemind — to overcome the last of the A.I.s, and by then the total human population would be some tens of millions and the Earth pushed to the edge of complete ecological collapse,” Ami finished. “It took centuries for us to clean up most of the damage and Earth’s population to recover to the point that we could move off-planet in any real numbers. Mercury had no survivors, of course, and Venus is now inhabited by primitive descendents of the insectoid and reptilian armies that Beryl summoned there, but we founded some colonies to exploit its natural resources and established trade relations with the descendants of the human survivors on Mars. We’d barely begun mining operations in the asteroid belt when the Empire of Jurai found us, and hammered us back to the few cities on Earth and the single city on the Moon powered by the heartstones we were able to scavenge from Moon Queendom ruins, and so able to produce shields capable of stopping the worst Jurai can throw at us. It’s been a stalemate ever since, Jurai unable to penetrate the cities’ shields and us unable to expand without more heartstones we lack the resources to create.”

She fell silent, and the room seemed to sing with tension. Most of the downtimers were looking at Michiru and Haruka on the couch where they were sitting with Hotaru cuddled between them clutching their hands, but Usagi’s eyes were flitting between her Setsuna, Princess Pluto, an Usa sitting between her parents but focused across the room on her best friend, and Serenity’s sympathetic gaze.  Finally focusing on Setsuna, Usagi said in a voice that shook, “A few days ago, the morning that the terrorists nuked London and the US cities, you said you couldn’t tell us why this was necessary, yet — that there was something we needed to see, first. Have we seen it? Can you tell us now?”

Setsuna and Princess Pluto exchanged glances, before Setsuna nodded with a sigh. “Yes, I can.” She reached up to rub her face. “There’s no way to prevent the devastation of the Islamic world,” she said. “Whatever we do, the only questions are how long it will take and whether it will be by nuclear attack, invasion, civil war, or more likely some mix of the three. The Islamists are absolutely dedicated to their cause and absolutely ruthless, and have too much popular support throughout the Islamic world for anything else. The TV images of crowds in city after city celebrating the devastation in the United States and London we’ll be seeing in the days after we return home will be proof enough of that — and the reason why in a few years most Americans will accept the nuclear destruction of those same cities, and more.

“Beyond that, _maybe_ I could keep the cold war between the United States and the Paneuropean Union from going hot. Certainly, I could prevent the Reign of Steel — I know exactly which mainframe would spontaneously produce the Overmind, it was the Overmind that supplied the seeds that the other Zoneminds grew out of, and apparently nonmagical computers spontaneously waking up is a _very_ rare event. With your help I could get us out into interplanetary space, and the first steps out into interstellar space. In fact, once we return home we’ll be doing just that.

“But thanks to the United States, what I could _not_ do was get us into space as a united Earth, and build an interstellar coalition strong enough to face down the Empire of Jurai when it arrives. The end result would be a devastating interstellar war that would end with us exactly where we are now, only with a death toll in the tens of billions. We’d end up playing Judaea to Jurai’s Rome, and when Jurai finally tired of the constant low-level insurgency with the occasional open rebellion and bombarded us we’d have the same number of heartstones and so the same number of crystal cities, but a much larger Earth population, _much_ too large to fit into those cities. And that doesn’t include the casualties our allies would suffer in the initial conquest.

“No, the path I was guiding us along before Yasuko’s awakening — that my counterpart, here, guided _her_ Senshi along,” she added with a nod to Princess Pluto, “to the rebuilt Moon Queendom, an interstellar realm of peace, security, freedom and justice, was the one with the fewest number of deaths, the least amount of suffering that had any real chance of success.”

“Before _my_ awakening? Why am I so important?” Ranma demanded.  “I’m just a martial artist with the memories of a little princess of a dead queendom!”

“I can’t tell you yet.” Setsuna smiled wryly as everyone else except Princess Pluto groaned, and lifted a hand.  “I’ll be able to tell you soon, I promise, but not quite yet.”

As the others grumbled, Usagi gazed suspiciously at her advisor for a long moment, started to speak, hesitated, and finally said, “Setsuna, the rendezvous point, where Princess Pluto met us, you said that was Tokyo at the point where nothing we did could make things worse. Just _when_ was that?”

Setsuna instantly sobered. “That was the day when that timeline’s Senshi and their allies finally succeed in subverting the Tokyo Zonemind — and the day that Haruka and Michiru are killed when they act as a diversion,” she said softly.

“What!” Hotaru sat bolt upright between her adopted parents. “We have to help them!” Finding herself the focus of the shocked attention of everyone else in the room, the normally soft-spoken girl shrank back in her seat on the couch, but stubbornly repeated, “We have to … we can’t let that happen.”

“Of course we’ll help, before returning home,” Usagi said firmly, smiling as Haruka and Michiru hugged their daughter.

“And I’m going to help!” Usa asserted, leaping to her feet to turn and glare down at her parents.  “No way are Hotaru, Ranma and Akane going into that kind of fight without me!”

Serenity winced and clutched at Endymion’s hand, but her voice was calm as she replied.  “Of course you are. In fact, after discussing it with Usagi and Mamoru we agreed that you could return with your friends.”

“What?” Usa stared at her parents in shock for a long moment, before demanding suspiciously, “For how long?”

Serenity sighed, then let go of her husband’s hand to rise to her feet. She placed her hands on her daughter’s shoulders to hold Usa at arm’s length and look her in the eye (and hide her shock as she realized that her daughter was as tall as she was — she’d already known, of course, but she hadn’t _known_ ). “For as long as your friends need you,” she replied. “As much as your father and I might wish otherwise you’re an adult now, so whether you go and when you come home to stay is your decision.”

From beside his wife, Endymion added, “Just remember that your parents will miss you.  We’d appreciate it if you made it home for birthdays and vacations.”

Usa’s stunned gaze switched back and forth between her parents.  Then, eyes tearing up, she stepped forward to throw out her arms and pull them both into a hug. “Love you, Mom, Dad,” she whispered as they returned her embrace.

The three stood clutching each other in silence for long minutes until Usa finally, reluctantly broke the embrace. Wiping at wet cheeks as she turned to face Mamoru and her tear-shiny-eyed baka-mama, she asked, “So, when do we leave?”

/oOo\

Setsuna sat in the dark, in the suite she’d been assigned on their arrival, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window at the light-speckled nighttime landscape of Crystal Tokyo.  It was a city that she had admired in the Time Gates many times over the long centuries, whenever she’d needed strength to continue her mission, and one that would now no longer exist in her own timeline.

Months after the timeline shift with Ranma’s awakening, she still had mixed feelings about that.  The new future, while still hard, was so much brighter — but Crystal Tokyo had been her strength and driving purpose for so long that its sudden absence had left a … a _hole_ in her soul. She was sure that void would fill as she adjusted to the new, happier future, but for now it left her feeling off-kilter whenever she dwelt on it.

Then the soft gong sounded that indicated someone was at her door, and she turned her chair around to face across her main room and called out, “Enter.”

The door silently slid open, the light spilling into her suite from the corridor outlining Usagi — from the lack of long twin odangoed ponytails, _her_ Usagi, rather than the Queen.

“Usagi, come in, have a seat,” Setsuna invited. “I’ve been waiting for you.” Her young friend came in, the door sliding closed, and flipped her long single braid across a shoulder to hang down between her breasts before dropping into the chair across a low table from Setsuna.

Setsuna reached for the room’s controls on the side of her armrest and dialed up the room’s lighting, and examined Usagi in the brighter light. Her young friend looked … pensive, wistful. “Princess, what’s wrong?” Setsuna softly asked.

Usagi sighed, turning slightly to look out the window. After a long moment, she said, “All afternoon, while our counterparts have been telling us everything they remember about the day Haruka and Michiru were killed, I’ve been watching Usa with her parents — she didn’t leave their sides all day. They really love each other.”

Voice shaking, still staring out at the city lights, she asked, “I’m never going to have a little Usa of my own, now, am I?”

Setsuna remembered her own thoughts, just before her Princess had arrived. It seemed she wasn’t the only one finding their happier future to be bittersweet.

“Princess ... Usagi, look at me.” When the blonde girl turned to look at her advisor, eyes already wet, Setsuna said, “You are right, with our Crystal Tokyo gone, so is the little girl that would have been born in it. You and Mamoru will have children — _lots_ of children — and one of them will be a little pink-haired hellion that you’ll name Usagi, but she won’t be our own Chibi-Usa. But _our_ Chibi-Usa, the one tucked into bed with our living, breathing Firefly right now to help her keep the nightmares away, has grown into a magnificent young woman.  And we’ll be seeing a lot more of her than we would have, before.”

“There is that, that’s not so bad,” Usagi agreed with a tremulous smile as she wiped at her eyes.  “So ... _lots_ of children, huh?”

Setsuna threw up her hands in mock horror.  “ _Lots_ and lots! You may be a reincarnated princess with an important role to play in what’s to come, but you’re a homemaker at heart. Once we redevelop rejuvenation, you’ll never be really happy without at least one child bouncing around the house. If Queen Serenity didn’t have the same thing to look forward to in a few decades, she’d be _insanely_ jealous.” _And some of those children will die fighting for our dream, as the young always have in nations where freedom and justice matter._

Usagi softly laughed. “Not so bad at all!” she repeated, her smile finally turning more natural.

“But no getting started right away!” Setsuna mock-scolded, shaking a finger at her princess. “It’s going to be many decades before we start developing rejuvenation again, and you have a tendency to be impatient.”

“I’m _not_ that bad!” Usagi insisted through her laughter.

“Yes, you are,” Setsuna disagreed instantly. “In fact,” she continued, sobering, “I’m surprised you didn’t insist we return to our rendezvous point in the morning, to help out the Senshi there.”

Usagi shrugged. “Why? Don’t we have all the time in the world?”

“Yes, we do, but you’d be surprised at how few people remember to take that into account when making plans,” Setsuna replied. “Besides, more often than not your impatience is out of a desire to get unpleasant experiences over with, and after over six years you still hate the fighting.”

Usagi shrugged again. “I’m not going to take Usa away from her parents on short notice just because I want to get another fight behind us. Besides ...” Her voice trailed away and she gazed thoughtfully at her advisor for a long moment, then continued, “Besides, after what we saw and learned today, I expect both little sis and our Firefly are going to have a bad night. If we’re going into battle, we need them at their best.  And they won’t if they’re groggy from nightmares and lack of sleep.”

Setsuna stilled as she realized what Usagi’s hesitation had been about — secrets. Rather, _more_ secrets. Forcing herself to relax, she asked, “So, Yasuko told you about those, did she?”

Usagi shook her head. “No. Since when has _Ranma_ been willing to admit weakness to anyone unless forced to it? Except Akane, perhaps — against all odds, that girl has been good for her. Certainly not what I expected after what I read in the file on his life you first gave us.

“You know, it’s odd,” she mused, leaning back in her chair. “Ranma doesn’t look anything like she did as Yasuko. And a lot of the time, she doesn’t act like her, either.” She smiled wistfully, remembering a little five-year-old blonde practicing her puppy-dog eyes on her big sister as she importuned her for help with the homework from the first of her lessons. “Other times, like when she’s scamming extra ice cream just like Yasuko used to wheedle extras from the chefs, she feels so much like my first little sis that 20th-century Tokyo feels ... surreal ... like a dream that I’ll wake up from at any time to find myself back in bed in my suite in the palace on the Moon.”

“ ‘First little sister’ is a good way to look at it,” Setsuna said, politely ignoring Usagi’s sudden melancholy. “Remember, unlike you Senshi and Mamoru, her soul wasn’t sent forward by your mother.  Ranma had to get here the hard way, life by life over four thousand years. While she can’t remember those lives, they have left their own imprint on her personality — her soul. Yes, her memories of her time as Yasuko will give that life more influence than any other of the rest, but those are still the memories of a six-year-old ... a handful of years against the twelve that Ranma can remember in this life, and the personality he was born with as a foundation. You really are better off thinking of her as Yasuko’s daughter rather than Yasuko herself.”

Usagi shook off her mood, and straightened to gaze sternly at Setsuna. “Perhaps. But still, she _is_ my sister. So why did I learn of her nightmares — her _new_ nightmares — from Elder Cologne, by telephone the day Ranma and Akane came back from the new Amazon village?”

“Because it was private, and not my secret to tell,” Setsuna replied. She held up a hand to cut off Usagi’s hot retort. “Yes, you’re her big sister, in some ways you’ve been a better mother for her in the short time you’ve known her than Nodoka has, and if I’d learned of the nightmares any way other than the Time Gates I would have probably told you about them. But that’s not how I learned. With the Time Gates it’s much too easy to find out all sorts of things people wouldn’t want spread around. That’s why I have my rule on privacy — if it doesn’t advance our greater cause and no one’s life or health is threatened, whatever I learn through the Time Gates that is personal stays that way. Even from their families — often _especially_ from their families.”

Usagi closed the mouth she’d opened for her retort, thoughts of some of her more embarrassing private moments flashing through her mind. Finally, she reluctantly nodded. “I can’t disagree with that,” she admitted. “But you’re also keeping secrets that _aren’t_ personal. I’m supposed to be the Princess ... however much I complain about it sometimes,” she added with a flashing grin at Setsuna’s choked off snort. “What we learned today shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, and you obviously still have secrets about the part little sis is going to play that you haven’t told me — or even her. Don’t you get tired of being the Keeper of Secrets?” (Setsuna winced slightly at the capital letters she could hear in the title her princess had just bestowed on her.) “Just after the final showdown with the Confederacy, I asked if we could get by without the Time Gates’ view of the future, and you said maybe in a few years. How many is a ‘few’?”

Setsuna lifted an eyebrow at the question, then spent a few minutes thinking as Usagi fidgeted. Finally, the emerald-haired woman replied, “I’d say ... around fifteen, more or less, if I give them up at all. But for after that, I’ve been considering compromise — the largest ‘Choose Your Own Path’ adventure in the history of the world, with the major branches laid out for the next thousand years along with the percent chance of each and perhaps a list of possible actions on our part to favor one branch over another. That would give us much of the benefits of the Time Gates’ capability to see the possible futures, while weaning me away from micromanaging them.”

Usagi rose to her feet and struck a stiff mock-military pose. “That is an _excellent_ idea, make it so,” she ordered pompously, then giggled. “Now, I’ll let you get to bed.  You’re sleeping and eating for two, don’t forget, and I expect you to take good care of yourself.”

She strode to the door, then paused and turned around as it slid open. “But tomorrow, we’re going to find some private time and you’re _finally_ going to tell me all about your plans for my little sister,” she warned sternly, then smiled. “Good night.” And she was gone, door sliding closed behind her, leaving behind a suddenly thoughtful Senshi of Time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a little of my own opinions sneaking into this story, where it comes to the international scene, so I thought I'd gas on a bit on my own opinions. First, whatever one’s opinion on the claims of wrongs suffered by the Islamic world by the West, the Islamists are dead set on becoming the dominant power in the world and have no problem slaughtering whomever they have to in order to achieve that, of any nationality, ethnicity, and religion. While ‘soft’ methods and overreach can certainly undercut their popular support, the only thing that is going to stop the hardcore fanatics is bloody violence — the only question is who applies the violence, local co-religionists or the West, and how surgically focused the counterattack is. That does not mean that I approve of a “nuke them all, God will recognize His own” strategy, I don’t.
> 
> Second, the chances of any sort of effective world government is essentially zero so long as the United States are a world power. Whatever the claims made by pundits and activists, the United States are not an empire. We are close to what the Roman Republic had, but even there we lack the permanence of what the Romans had evolved centuries before they acquired an emperor. At most we have a protectorate, and any our allies are free to leave whenever they choose (as demonstrated by France when it left NATO and the Philippines when it demanded we abandon our military bases there). No, whatever envisioned by at least one SF writer that had the nations of the Earth changed to US states and a senator from Australia running for president, the US will not evolve into a world government. However, neither will the US accept the domination of a foreign world government, and they have the power to make the rejection stick. So anyone wanting to postulate a future world government needs to deal with the US one way or another. No, I don’t think what I described here is a possible destiny of the US, Europe, or the Islamic world, but I also don’t think we are ever going to get a world government, either.


	9. Preparations

Usagi had gotten it half right. Ranma’s life had given her plenty of nightmare fodder, but none of it involved light shows, however spectacular. For her, light shows linked to challenges and triumphs, not fear or pain. The closest she came were nightmares filled with overpowering heat and mocking laughter as fire danced all around him and ahead of him a tiny doll-Akane went up like a torch. As spectacularly devastating as the Jurai bombardment had been, it hadn’t involved either flames or heat. Her night snuggled up against Akane was undisturbed.

Hotaru was another story.

/\

Saturn stood beside the invaders’ portal. She was alone, staring across what had been a park lawn in front of bordering apartment buildings but was now a long, shallow V-shaped trench leading to a pile of rubble.

“They’re coming!”

Saturn heard the shout with crystal clarity, and turned to stare past the invaders’ portal at the marching cohorts. Two of them, one coming straight toward the portal where she stood a solitary vigil, the other marching at an angle toward the irregular crystal pillar where her adopted parents stood guard.

She quickly took stock of herself — still a bit light-headed, the world wobbling ever so little, but it would have to do. She’d lost one family, she wouldn’t lose another. Facing squarely toward the enemy threatening her parents, she held up the Silence Glaive vertically before her in a slightly shaky two-handed grip. Again, the large blade at the end was surrounded by a slowly expanding ball of coruscating purple energy as she held on ... and on ... she didn’t want to obliterate the entire park and everyone in it ... just a little longer ... and she tried to slice the Silence Glaive downward, and couldn’t move. Fear froze her, a premonition that something terrible was about to happen, something world-shattering.

She waited, and waited, and the cohorts marched closer and closer, both to her and her mothers. Neptune and Uranus backed a step before again holding their ground, their own fear clear in their stances, and at last she couldn’t wait any longer. The Silence Glaive dropped.

The world went silent, surreal, and stayed that way, and even as the purple light of her power flashed forward the legionnaires vanished as if they had never been. In their place stood ranks of soldiers of the Japanese Defense Force in their mottled brown and green field uniforms, bayoneted rifles braced against their shoulders.

Saturn stood frozen in place, unable to even shout as her attack turned translucent, allowing her to watch through it as it silently plowed into the soldiers, bodies blowing apart as it swept its way through. Heads, limbs, torsos and smaller, less recognizable pieces of bodies exploded into the air in a rain of blood, thrown in all directions. The blast carried on to smash into an apartment building at the edge of the park, debris flung into the air to strike down more soldiers.

For a long moment nothing changed except the last of the debris raining on the park, until the last piece of brick and concrete thudded down. Then more people flashed into existence, women of all ages dressed in everything from kimonos to business suits to Western blouses and skirts to house dresses to jeans and T-shirts, boys and girls in school uniforms of all kinds or goth or punk styles or simple play clothes. Even as Saturn found she was again frozen in place, unable to so much as twitch an eyebrow, the women and children spread about the field she had just devastated. They knelt on the bloody grass to gather up the scattered pieces of their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and brought them to offer to the frozen girl, silently begging her to fix what she had broken.

Then she heard the first sound since she had dropped her Silence Glaive: “Firefly?” Finding herself suddenly — _finally_ — able to move, Saturn turned to find her Michiru-mama standing behind her. The Senshi of the Deeps was holding the burned and broken body of her Haruka-papa, the platinum blonde woman’s dead eyes staring blankly at the sky.

Hotaru’s scream seemed to shake the walls of Usa’s personal suite.

/oOo\

The next morning the rest of the Senshi, downtimers and uptimers both, were careful to ignore the state Hotaru and Usa were in. Not that they’d heard anything the night before, of course, the sound dampening in the walls of the suites was excellent, but from Usa’s bleary face and Hotaru’s reddened eyes it wasn’t hard to realize what had happened. Still, the girls had done their best to act normally so the rest played along (though in Usagi’s case only after an elbow in the side and repressing shake of the head from Ranma — the younger sister understood the need to put up a bold front).

Still, by an equally unspoken agreement everyone set aside any hint of business and settled for pure fun. This time it was Serenity that kicked off the prank war that raged throughout the day, sucking in the downtimers and uptimers alike with the palace servants gleefully supplying whatever was needed to all sides. And of course Ranma and Haruka went head-to-head on swoop bikes with some of the others joining in for fun (and to supply moving course obstacles). Ranma won the first few laps while the older girl adjusted, but Haruka finished the final lap first — in the end, experience and tricks of the trade the older woman was able to translate over from her wheels-on-the-ground motorcycle racing triumphed over sheer talent and aggressiveness. Still, Haruka quietly resolved to avoid a rematch until their next visit in order to maintain her bragging rights for at least a while, the speed with which Ranma had been picking up on the tricks she’d used had been positively scary. She _also_ resolved to do her best to keep the redhead away from motorcycles — unlike swoop bikes, motorcycles didn’t come with emergency auto-steering and repressor fields for when their riders got crazy.

But the next day, fun time was over and they started something the downtimers had rarely had in preparation for their previous fights — _very_ thorough prep sessions covering their upcoming enemies.

/oOo\

Setsuna pressed the ‘forward’ button on the remote, and the holographic image in the front of the triangular table the downtimers were seated at (and Usa, but she’d been as much a part of the group as the rest for years) flickered before reforming into a new image of a tank-like treaded vehicle with a small turret, rolling down a city street. There were no visible weapons, instead it was covered by a forest of antennae.

“The SAU-03 Centurion,” she said. “As an AU it is another autonomous unit, designed for mobile command-and-control of non-autonomous units. As such, it is a prime target — take it out, and the units it is controlling become inert at best, much more stupid at worst as they fall back on preprogrammed orders and much more basic threat analysis and response software.”

A panel slid open on the Centurion’s turret, and a thin red beam from the opening flashed past the camera viewpoint. Pluto hit the ‘pause’ button. “Usually, its sole weapon is an anti-personnel laser. However, its normal defense is that it is usually surrounded by other robots operating as bodyguards and servitors.”

She hit the ‘forward’ button again, and the holograph flickered again, revealing a vaguely humanoid, man-sized dull-gray robot. “This might be one of the bodyguards, the XNU-05 Myrmidon. Developed by the Zoneminds to make use of human military ordnance and vehicles, it will usually be armed with —” She broke off, hitting the ‘pause’ button, when Minako raised her hand. Since the meeting began, Setsuna had been pleased to see the girl lose all of the ditzy behavior she’d been known for, focused intently on the parade of images and thumbnail sketches. True, it wasn’t unheard of for her to become more her old self when things got serious, but that was usually during the missions themselves — perhaps she was finally shedding the mask she’d worn since London.

Minako observed, “This is the most human-like robot we’ve seen so far. Are there any that actually _look_ human?”

Setsuna nodded. “Yes, there are, the Redjacks and Liliths. They look completely human, and the other Zoneminds are constantly upgrading them as guerillas, junkrats and nomads learn new ways of detecting them. But you won’t find any in Zone Tokyo, because robots don’t have ki. Ranma’s family and the other high level martial artists can detect them — and the other anthropomorphic models such as the ones that mimic rats — every time just by looking at them, and the Tokyo Zonemind can’t figure out how they do it. By this time, it’s given up on anthropomorphic robots entirely as a waste of resources.”

Minako grinned viciously. “Good to know,” she said.

“Isn’t it, though?” Setsuna agreed with a shark-grin of her own before turning back to the briefing. “Myrmidons are usually armed with whatever weapons were favored by the local military. In Zone Tokyo that was the Imperial Army, so ...”

/\

Throughout the briefing, Setsuna had been keeping a close but covert eye on their Firefly. If it had been the day before she wouldn’t have needed to be _that_ covert, everyone else had been ... not watching the wounded girl, exactly, but _aware_ whenever she was in the room. She’d also been the first pick whenever anyone had needed a partner in the day’s fun (when they could pry her away from her parents and best friend), and she’d ended the day as thoroughly loved as she’d been exhausted. Apparently the attention had had its desired effect, and she’d looked much better the following morning and had thrown herself into the briefings as enthusiastically as she had the previous day’s fun.

Of course, the nature of the briefing had made it more difficult for the others to pay much attention to Hotaru, seated along two of the three sides of the table and focused on Setsuna and the holograph display at the middle of the third side — Hotaru as much as any of them.

That had actually been what rang Setsuna’s alarm bells, the youngest of the original Inner Senshi had always been a gentle soul, in her previous life as much as the present one. Under Serenity she had been happy to live her life as a reclusive (if renowned) scholar of history, leaving dealing with the most serious day-to-day threats to her fellow Outers and remaining an unspoken threat during negotiations with the more ... lively ... of the interstellar neighbors of the Moon Queendom and its allies. She had usually only joined her fellow Senshi for the occasional training session and at the most important of social events — such as the birthday party of the Queen’s younger daughter. Even in her current life, she normally left the analysis and planning to the others, simply going along with whatever her role was in the plans they came up with. Yes, Setsuna definitely needed to have a talk with her young friend — but privately, and unnoticed by the rest. Not easy, but Setsuna was nothing if not patient.

Her opportunity came with their fourth break of the day, when Hotaru finally used the meeting room’s attached washroom alone. Even as the door swooshed shut behind the girl, Setsuna _stepped_ to her Time Gates, and took the time to check Hotaru’s likely fate in the coming fight. What she found didn’t surprise her.

With that done, she _stepped_ into the washroom, into the same split-second that she’d _stepped_ out of the meeting room. “Hey, Hotaru,” she said softly, and hid a grin when the raven-haired girl shrieked as she practically hit the ceiling. Setsuna missed the little pranks she had used to pull on her princess.

“Setsuna-mama, that wasn’t funny!” Hotaru insisted when she caught her breath, trying for a menacing frown and only managing ‘cute’.

Setsuna giggled. “I don’t know, from my side it was hilarious,” she disagreed, then sobered. “Firefly, we need to talk. Take care of your business and wash up, then we’re going to the Time Gates.”

Hotaru nodded and followed orders (blushing furiously even though Setsuna turned her back while she used the toilet), then followed her mother-in-spirit through a portal to the Time Gates’ dreary landscape. Once there, she asked, “So what do we need to talk about?”

Setsuna eyed her sort-of-daughter’s defensive posture — arms crossed, shoulders slightly hunched — and suppressed a sigh as she searched for words. Finally, she said, “Firefly, you’re taking this very seriously.”

“It isn’t serious business?” Hotaru demanded.

“Well, yes, but it always is ... and you usually don’t.”  Setsuna gazed at the tight, closed expression on the face of the normally expressive if shy girl and _did_ sigh, then stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. “I’m not going to pretend that I know exactly what you’ve been going through since the last battle,” she said softly — and it was true enough, she _didn’t_ know _exactly_ what Hotaru was going through, even if her five millennia of experience gave her a strong and fairly accurate general opinion. “I know you are eager to save the lives of these counterparts of your mothers, and others, who lost their own Firefly. We all agree with you, we’re eager to help. Just remember you have people who love you, and would miss you if you died. Don’t take any unnecessary chances. Okay? Can you promise me that?”

Hotaru had stiffened when hugged, but as her Setsuna-mama spoke she relaxed until she finally, hesitantly returned the hug. “Y-Y-Yes, I c-c-c-can,” she stuttered, sniffled, and took a deep uneven breath. “Yes, I can,” she said again more firmly.

Setsuna tightened her hug, Hotaru did the same, and the two stood silently for long minutes before Setsuna reluctantly broke the embrace. She placed her hands on Hotaru’s shoulder and held her at arm’s length, smiling sadly at the girl’s wet face. “You must understand that while we are happy to do this, this is the _only_ time we can. It will be dangerous, and there’s an essentially infinite number of other timelines — we can’t come close to fixing them all, we’d inevitably die trying, and our own home needs our help.” She waited until the girl reluctantly nodded, then pulled her into another brief hug and released her. “Now you need to get back and wash your face before rejoining your adoring public. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Hotaru nodded again, wiped at her cheeks and smiled tremulously, before turning to walk through the still-open portal back into the washroom.

Setsuna closed the portal behind her, then pulled out a handkerchief to wipe at her own damp cheeks before turning to the Gates. She again checked out the likely possibilities of the coming future, and smiled. _Better,_ she thought when she found a greatly lowered possibility of Saturn killing herself by throwing herself into the fight with too much enthusiasm, and that others were less likely to die trying to save her. The smiling Senshi of Time shut down the Time Gates and _stepped_ back to the spot she had left only minutes before in the meeting room.


	10. Detour Off Ramp

_Two weeks later:_

Ranma sat gingerly on a now-familiar couch in the room that the downtimers had been using as a parlor, where they could all gather at the end of the day before seeking their beds. The redhead’s caution wasn’t because she doubted the sturdiness of the couch, she suspected it was strong enough to survive the chaos of the Tendo dojo during the years she had spent there. (Often good years, on reflection — true, it hadn’t exactly ended well, but they had brought her her lover and big sis, and that made up for a lot.) Rather, the caution was because of her current state.

The costume she’d worn when she arrived was gone, and the replacement Queen Serenity had ordered made of the same reactive cloth as the Senshi’s costumes was tucked away in her no-space. In its place were worn, tattered, apparently oft-repaired almost-rags in dull brown, green and gray with a hood to cover her fiery hair. And dirty. It was a false picture, of course, the ‘rags’ were made from the same reflective cloth as her costume, for what it was worth. (The renewed Moon Queendom had reinvented energy weapons and the Jurai had never lost them — the reactive cloth did very well against energy attacks and well enough against impacts but not so well against piercing attacks, like bullets, as even silk.) And of course she, along with the other downtimers, was as dirty as the ‘rags’. It wouldn’t do to arrive at their destination looking like they’d just stepped out of furos that no one in Japan had had access to for years.

Mind, the assault rifle she’d leaned against the wall beside the couch was clean, if worn, but that was just a different kind of potential mess when one considered gun oil.

All in all, her appearance — all of their appearance — looked decidedly out of place for the understated elegance of the palace, but was just what one would expect of some of the more successful junk rats that were the only survivors haunting the Tokyo of their destination.

At least, their appearance was _almost_ what one would expect, and Ranma frowned at Minako brightly nattering to Ami that the fight was going to be just like what she could remember of the training in their previous life — all automated mechanics that they could unleash their full strength on. The redhead tried to tease out the jarring element in the Senshi’s disguise — most of the Inners at least, her sister and brother-in-law were with the Outers and Usa for a private farewell with Usa’s parents — then sighed as she realized what was out of place. The hair of all of the Senshi present didn’t look as if it had been hacked at with a knife, like his own had been on the training journey with his father before he started wearing it longer in a low ponytail. It was a definite flaw in their disguises, but there was no way she was going to even try to convince the others to fix it. He’d learned his lesson about girls and hair within days of his arrival at the Tendo dojo, when Ryoga’s thrown bandana had cut off Akane’s long, flowing locks and she’d slugged them both. Besides, after they were done in Tokyo 2072 they would be returning to their own time within seconds of leaving and wouldn’t it be fun to try to explain to everyone not in the know what had happened to their hair? _We’ll just hafta hope that the Tokyo Zonemind doesn’t notice if any of its cameras pick us up, or doesn’t think it’s important,_ she thought, grimacing.

Akane plopped down beside her on the couch and leaned back without care for her own dirty state. To all appearances, Akane was relaxed, bored even, but Ranma knew better. Her lover was practically vibrating with tension and trying to hide it, but Ranma’s hold on her own center was firm where Akane wasn’t even trying yet so Ranma was able to pick up the nervousness permeating her ki. _Not_ the proper state for maybe going into a fight. Ranma grinned at her — she knew just the thing to steady her lover down. Or distract her, at least.

“Hey, Akane, Mamoru isn’t here yet, practice yer costume change,” Ranma ordered.

Akane straightened where she sat. “What, now?” she questioned. “Mamoru — both of them — will be here any minute!”

“Then you’d better hurry,” Ranma said, shrugging.

Akane hesitated, but finally stood with a sigh when Ranma motioned her up. Her lover was in sensei-mode, so trying to talk her out of it would be pointless — and if she took too long, the men would arrive and Ranma might _still_ insist.

Stepping away from the couch, Akane settled into a wide stance, took a deep breath, and flashed into motion at Amaguriken speed as she stripped off the filthy ‘rags’ she was wearing, folded them up, stuffed them into her own no-space, pulled out the new costume the palace servants had made for her piece by piece, and _almost_ got it all on — her fingers slipped on her second boot, and it barely missed Rei as it whipped across the room to slam into the opposite wall.

“Oops,” Akane muttered in the abruptly silent room as she walked over to pick up her boot and pull it on, her face flushed crimson. She’d been excited when Ranma had said she’d _finally_ gotten fast enough for the costume change, what girl wouldn’t, instant change of clothes! Just the shopping possibilities alone ... But she’d quickly learned why Ranma wasn’t all that excited about it, and it wasn’t because she wasn’t a _real_ girl, whatever her body looked like. Since Amaguriken speed outstripped her ability to adjust on the fly, it could only be used for repetitive motions or katas learned so well they were pure muscle memory — which meant that each outfit was essentially its own separate kata. She’d spent hours over the last week learning the ‘katas’ for her new outfits, even the one for her new costume needed to be relearned (in spite of looking essentially the same, the new materials changed weight and the way it moved), and she’d thought she had them both down pat. Apparently not.

Ranma was frowning thoughtfully when her red-faced lover rejoined her. She knew Akane was expecting ... well, not a _scathing_ remark, Ranma didn’t use the motivate-by-insult method her father had preferred, not anymore, but _something_. But Ranma’s mind was suddenly awash with ideas, cascading from watching Akane’s boot fly across the room. The style she was developing for emotion-free ki manipulation had a major flaw, one that she hadn’t been able to overcome — a lack of _ranged_ attacks. Something about emotion-laden ki kept it together for the split-second needed to hit the target. The emotion-cleansed technique she’d come up with simply couldn’t do it, her every attempt losing all coherence as soon as it left her hands.

 _And ya got so fixated on fixin’ yer moko takabisha that ya never thought about_ Mousse _, an’ all the crap he used ta throw at you, idiot!_ That wasn’t entirely fair — between training Akane and learning how to be an Amazon princess (however reluctantly) at a time when the Amazons weren’t exactly sure what that meant, anymore, and dealing with everyone adjusting to their new home at Nikko, she hadn’t had as much time as she would have liked to explore the new style she was developing.

But she was aware of the obvious now, and thoughts of all the different types and shapes of objects she and Akane could store away — cloth, wood or steel balls of different sizes, discs, boomerangs, explosives even — raced through her mind before she forced the flood of ideas to a halt, remembering Doug-sensei’s advice. Training was something done _between_ missions, not _during_ missions. The second was a good way to get distracted, injured, throw off reflexes that were needed _right now_ , maybe get killed or get others killed. Not that it had ever been a problem for Ranma during those two chaotic years, but Doug-sensei had pointed out that there were very few people like her. Besides, it wasn’t likely that it would help them much in this fight, anyway — not against armored machines.

So instead of commenting on Akane’s performance or babbling as she tried to pass along her ideas all at once, Ranma simply pointed at Akane’s rifle leaning against the wall next to her own. “Ya forgot yer weapon,” she said, and grinned as Akane’s blush deepened.

Ranma focused for a moment on the new symbol centered on Akane’s chest now that she was in costume. They’d liked Setsuna’s suggestion of the symbolism of Achilles’ shield, with its scenes of war and peace — the soldier, and what the soldier fought and died to protect. Unfortunately, while the idea was good, Achilles’ shield was just too much to fit into a costume emblem and too obscure for most people to get the reference even if they could pick out the details. So instead, the red hammer was replaced by the kite shield of the Western knight with a lit torch emblazoned on it, and crossed behind the torch a hoe, scroll and sword. Still a bit busy, but nicely symbolizing what they were all about.

Still, as nice as the new costume was it wasn’t what she’d be wearing when they left. “So let’s see ya switch back without throwin’ yer boot across the room.”

/\

The goodbyes all said, Ranma stood in front of the gray curtain of Setsuna’s portal (this time, at Ranma’s request, wide enough for two to go through at once), waiting her and Akane’s turn to step through. She was hand-in-hand with her lover (the hands not holding their rifles) and their ki intertwined to allow them to sense each other’s emotions while centered and with their own ki pure. Unfortunately, the shared emotions weren’t the comfort they usually were, because Akane was less than happy with her. Why couldn’t the Outers and the royal party have waited just a few more seconds to arrive, instead of just when Akane had started her costume change? Or why couldn’t the two Mamoru’s been at the back of the group or even in the middle instead of in front?

Not that their free show had been all that much, just a few flashes of bare skin as Akane spun and twisted in place, the girl moving too fast for anyone to see the details Ranma enjoyed so much. But from the first day she and Ranma had met and the youngest Tendo tried to hit him with a rock (of _very_ impressive size, no one had ever said she wasn’t strong), Akane had never been exactly comfortable with showing off her body to the opposite sex. Haruka’s offhand thanks for being nice enough to wait until they’d arrived to put on the free strip-tease hadn’t helped. Ranma was going to have to figure out some way to properly ‘thank’ the boyish blonde woman for that comment later.

“No, Diane, you can’t come, not yet, you know that! This is going to be dangerous and we’ll have two Luna’s and Artemis’s with us to do their part. You have your kittens to think about now, you and your kittens join us when we get home, as planned.”

Behind the pair, Usa continued her week-long off-and-on argument with her own Mau advisor, and in spite of her lover’s anger Ranma felt Akane squeeze her hand as a shudder of unease swept through the redhead (not fear, Saotome Ranma wasn’t afraid of nothin’!). Ranma knew Diane would be in human form, like all the Mau had been whenever she’d met them, but the she had trouble forgetting what they actually were. Though she’d found the kittens awfully cute, when they’d run into her once after escaping their minders. She smiled faintly as she remembered how she’d sat on the hallway floor, playing with the cute little furballs until one of the babysitters caught up with them. She hadn’t realized they were Mau until the harried servant had babbled out her thanks and cut the playtime short. But she’d have lots of playtime later, once Diane and her children rejoined them....

Then Minako vanished into the gray and it was their turn. Ranma already knew that Akane was properly centered and her ki flowing clean or her own emotions, as angry as she was, wouldn’t be so fully intertwined with her own — and that anger was fading into amusement in the face of Ranma’s eagerness. “Ya ready, Tomboy?” she whispered.

Akane mock-growled, but Ranma knew she knew she wasn’t fooling her and the growl turned into a giggle. She whispered back, “Baka. Close your eyes and let’s go.”

Eyes closed, the two walked forward and Ranma shivered as she felt _something_ change. But she wasn’t seeing white through her eyelids, and she cracked open one eye to find the same bleak landscape of mist and bare dirt. Like last time, her link with Akane was keeping the two from being blinded by the ki that saturated the area around the Time Gates.

She sighed in relief and opened her eyes while sending reassurance to Akane through their linked hands. “We’re good, now let’s see if this works,” she said. She pulled Akane to the side, then, out of the way of the Outers and Usa, she took a deep breath, let go of her center and Akane’s hand, and tried something she’d never thought of before her first visit to the Time Gates weeks before — she tried to find her center and suppress her ability to sense the ki surrounding her at the same time.

Nothing. That was good — fully centered, and not a hint of outside ki. _Okay, Ranma, let’s see if you can do this._ Before, whenever she’d opened herself up to the ki of those around her, she’d let her sense settle at a default level when she hadn’t pushed it as much as possible and perhaps a bit more. _This_ time she needed the barest hint and that was what she got, for the Time Gates, at least. She was awash in ki, as if in the middle of a strong-flowing stream, she could almost _feel_ it pushing against her as it swept past to swirl around the Gates.

 _Looks like findin’ the Gates is never gonna be a problem here,_ she thought with a grin, _just follow the current. Now let’s see if I can actually pick up anyone in this mess._ She focused on Akane, tried to open her ki sense just a _little_ more, and almost screamed as the universe seemed to explode around her, her sight going white as her senses overloaded — _all_ of them this time, her ears hammered by pure Sound as her skin seemed to catch fire. She instantly dropped out of center and gasped with relief as everything returned to normal, not even any ringing in her ears. Other than her sudden massive headache, she wouldn’t have known had happened.

Usagi anxiously asked, “Yasuko, are you all right?” She was kneeling on the ground holding one of Ranma’s hands — at eye level.

Ranma realized she was lying propped up in Akane’s lap with her head against her shoulder, her lover holding her other hand and everyone else gathered around. She quickly found her center at the same time she reached out for Akane through their joined hands, and silently sent her reassurance that was even true. Her headache was easing by the second. “Yeah, I’m fine, just opened up a bit too much,” she assured the rest. “That’s gonna take some practice.”

“Another time, I think,” Setsuna said from where she stood beside her princesses. She smiled at Ranma’s disappointed look. “While no time passes while we’re here, everyone else might get bored watching you staring at nothing and collapsing every so often,” she said, her smile widening into a teasing grin. “Besides, you might want to practice that at home, where a failure won’t try to metaphorically burn out your retinas.”

Ranma opened her mouth to object, then paused as she realized Setsuna was right. “Oh, all right,” she huffed in disgust, to a round of chuckles and giggles.

Setsuna turned toward the Time Gates, then paused to glance at Usagi. “And Princess, don’t forget — no calling Ranma ‘Yasuko’. This world’s Ranma is a grandfather, and he and their Usagi are perfectly comfortable with their current relationship as friends and allies. _Don’t_ blow that up in the middle of a war.” When Usagi nodded at the reminder, blushing furiously, Setsuna turned back to the Gates. “Then let’s go.”


	11. A Mothers and Child Reunion

_Japan, what used to be a Buddhist temple not far from the Nekomi Institute of Technology, now Sanctuary, 2072:_

Pluto stood where she had been when the other-dimensional Senshi had upended her world a minute and a half ago (or many hours, for her), waiting anxiously, almost unaware of Belldandy and Skuld standing by her — it was taking longer than she would have liked, her counterpart was giving her a wider margin than she really needed. Courteous, perhaps, but Uranus and Neptune were fighting for their lives and losing, and she was already a minute past the point when she’d intended to intervene. If they didn’t arrive in the next thirty seconds —

ALERT!  DIMENSIONAL INCURSION!  ALERT!  DIMENSIONAL INCURSION!  ALERT! The eagerly awaited alert from the Time Gates pounded in her head, and she grinned. At last! She waited those additional thirty seconds to give all the newcomers a chance to arrive, then without bothering to say goodbye to her Norn friends, she _stepped_ away to the Time Gates and brought up the image of the new portal. The same place as the last one, of course, thanks to the way Serenity had ordered the Gates be hardwired it couldn’t be anywhere else (orders that had been at Setsuna’s request in order to limit her own power, something she had regretted often over the millennia — being able to shift others anywhere she wished would have been useful).

She’d timed it right, all the newcomers had arrived in their civilian identities (and some excellent disguises). Their portal was shut down, and they had spread out in a circle watching around them. She instantly _stepped_ out to appear in the middle of the circle. “Pluto!” she called, ignoring the way most of the others whipped around at the sound of her voice to focus on her counterpart (though she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Ranma, Minako and Michiru, at least, kept their attention outward).

Her counterpart stumbled as she’d twisted in place, smiled wryly as she recovered at her old joke turned around on her, and Pluto shouted, “Uranus is in trouble, we need to go _now_!”

Past Pluto nodded. “Princess, you know what to do.”

And with that both Plutos _stepped_ away.

/\

Sailor Uranus crouched behind a pile of newly-created rubble, cursing silently to herself. Her and her lover’s part of the plan, to suck the Tokyo Zonemind’s immediate resources away from the Resistance’s true targets, had been going well — as it turned out, a little _too_ well. The latest oversized patrol they had encountered was bigger than expected by an order of magnitude, and while the resulting extensive damage to the urbanscape was irrelevant (except insofar as it made it somewhat harder for the Machines to maneuver), she had taken some serious hits. From the stabbing pain whenever she moved and blood dribbling from her mouth the results included broken ribs and a punctured lung, and she suspected further internal damage as well.

Before the Rise of the Machines, that wouldn’t have been a problem — just find a private spot to hide and wait for her Senshi healing to take care of it before transforming back into her civilian form. Unfortunately the Time Bitch had been right when she warned the Senshi that the Tokyo Zonemind had some way of tracking their Senshi forms. Somehow, she and Neptune were going to have to decisively break contact long enough for at least the punctured lung to heal before shifting back if she was going to survive. And she didn’t see any way for them to do it.

 _Of course,_ Neptune _can break contact easily enough, if I stay behind._ Yeah, like _that_ was going to happen. Still, she had to try.

Gritting her teeth, Uranus rolled to the edge of the rubble pile, biting back a shriek of pain as the edges of her broken ribs scraped against each other and sliced further into tissue and lung. At the moment, silence meant survival — the two Outers had cleared out all of the three-legged Stalker robots in the piece of Tokyo they’d claimed as their own (the security/patrol robots were dangerous enough against regular humans, but no match for the Saotomes, Morisatos, or Senshi), but she didn’t think they’d managed to eliminate all of the more dangerous human-sized eight-limbed spider-like Tarantulas that had taken over the Stalkers’ scouting role. And while the rubble pile was too thick for the Tarantulas’ thermograph sensors to see through, their hearing was _very_ sensitive.

She waited a long minute until she was certain that she could stay quiet, then carefully peeked around the edge of her hiding place — no Tarantulas in sight, just three of the fifteen-foot tall armored humanoid Hoplites whose presence indicated just how thoroughly the two Outers had gotten the Tokyo Zonemind’s attention. Dangerous to the Senshi — especially their IMLs (infantry missile launchers, the Senshi’s uniforms didn’t handle explosive warheads as well as their standard laser carbines, something the devoutly hoped the Zonemind hadn’t picked up on) — but not as sensitive to sounds. Good enough.

She rolled away from the edge again, waited until the latest wave of pain receded, and summoned her Senshi communicator (so far, at least, the zonemind hadn’t given any indication that he could detect _those_ in operation, so they had limited secure communications). “Neptune,” she murmured as quietly as she could and still be audible, “are you good?”

After a long moment of silence, Neptune’s voice sounded in her earbud. _“Yes, love, you?”_

“Afraid not. I’m pinned and wounded, I can’t revert and live, and I’m not going to be able to hide much longer. Go, love, you have to get away. If you’re still out here, maybe you can keep up enough pressure for Mercury’s plan to work.”

_“Let you leave me behind? Forget it, love, you aren’t going anywhere without me.”_

“But Mercury’s plan —”

_“She’ll just have to come up with a new one. She’s a smart woman, she’ll manage. Where are you?”_

“Michiru, _please_ —”

A scraping sound above her followed by several chunks of concrete bouncing off her head and shoulder caught her attention, and she looked up to find herself staring at the steel barrel-body of a Tarantula, its mounted gauss rifle swiveled to point at her head. _Sorry, love, but it looks like I’ll be leaving you behind, after —_

“Dead scream.”

Uranus jerked, caught by surprise by the words she hadn’t heard in decades — since before her foster-daughter’s offering up as a sacrifice — as a purple ball of energy slammed into the side of the robot above her, sending two of its legs flying away. Off-balance, it titled forward and tumbled down toward the blonde Senshi, and a thin shriek of pain ripped from her throat as hands grabbed her and yanked her out of the way. “Neptune, get here _now_ or be left behind!” came the shout in a voice etched by heartbreak into her memory.

Uranus ignored the pain ripping through her to twist against the hands pulling her along. Looking back at where she’d been, she saw one of the giant Hoplites loom over the rubble pile they’d just abandoned, its arm ending in its mounted laser carbine swinging toward them — and another glowing purple ball of pure power came in from off to the side to slam into it, hitting one of its IML tubes. The resulting explosion as the missile cooked off in its launcher tore away the arm and knocked it off its feet, and it vanished from sight with a grinding crash.

Then a wide-eyed Neptune seemed to appear out of nowhere, pulling Uranus to her feet, then scooping her up when one of her legs tried to give out — Uranus hadn’t even noticed the deep almost gushing wound in her thigh. “Where to?” the fuku-clad seaweed-green-haired woman demanded.

“Here!” That hated voice again, but _not_ from the direction the last dead scream had come from, what was going on? Uranus whimpered as she twisted in her lover’s arms, and found the familiar emerald-haired figure in her white-and-black fuku, standing by a swirling gray vertical flat oval like Uranus had never seen. Pluto was nowhere near ... Uranus twisted again, looked where the dead scream had come from, and her eyes widened as she saw a _second_ Pluto running toward them, shouting, “Go! Go!”

Neptune ran through the portal, as gently as she could, but Uranus’s sight still went white with pain. When her vision cleared, she saw a blasted, misty landscape surrounding the Time Gates — and a cot? Neptune all but tip-toed over to the cot and laid Uranus down on it, then knelt and wiped at the blood running from her lover’s mouth with a white-gloved hand while her other hand sought out one of Uranus’s. She whispered, “Still with us, love?”

Uranus gave her a miniscule nod, then looked past her with questioning eyes at the pair of Plutos that stepped up behind Neptune.

“You’ll have answers in a little while,” one Pluto said. “But for now, just relax while your body heals.”

Uranus nodded again, and closed her eyes to rest as best she could, clutching Neptune’s hand as the pain slowly faded.

/oOo\

Hotaru was finding it very hard to continue just lying where she was tucked against what was left of a large home’s outer wall. She glanced around at those others of her friends and family that she could see scattered about before staring again at what was left of the _inner_ wall. Like her, the rest were tucked away where any of the Machines passing by wouldn’t be able to see them through empty windows and over what was left of the walls. Everyone else was as still and silent as she was, and _had_ to be as tense. Waiting.

Once Setsuna-mama had vanished with her counterpart Usagi had followed their previously worked out plan of shifting south and holing up until the Plutos rejoined them with this world’s versions of her Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama. The youngest Senshi had never before felt as vulnerable as she had during that journey — they had all been in their civilian disguises to avoid detection, and most of the robots that haunted Tokyo’s ruins had weapons that could open up a normal human like a gutted fish with a single shot. Setsuna-mama had carefully looked over their route for Machine scouts before they left the Time Gates, of course, and hadn’t found any, but she’d pointed out one of the Time Gate’s biggest limitations was human — she couldn’t look _everywhere_.

So they’d made the journey to the general area for the rendezvous (and miles away from the spot where they’d been in Senshi form, however briefly) as quickly as they could while keeping nerve-wrackingly alert and stealthy, holed up in the first decent location they could find that could keep all of them more or less together and out of sight, and waited like rabbits absolutely still and silent in the undergrowth as they hid from the sharp eyes of a circling hawk — for _hours_. Setsuna-mama had called to let everyone know the rescue operation had gone off flawlessly even before they’d laagered up, but they hadn’t heard anything since and her mind had insisted on coming up with ever more extreme ways the Plutos and her other mothers’ counterparts could be ambushed while they travelled to join them.

Hotaru’s mouth quirked in what could charitably be called a faint sympathetic smile as she considered the others. _Ranma must be in hell._ The momentary humor faded fast, though, as her thoughts returned to the people not there.

Then between one breath and the next Setsuna _was_ there, standing against the inner wall. It was all Hotaru could do not to squeal in pleasure as _her_ Setsuna-mama glanced around the room, recognizable in her ragged and dirty civilian identity and carrying her own assault rifle.

“Everyone can relax,” she said in a normal conversational volume, “I’ve checked everywhere around here thoroughly, we’re clear for now.”

Even as the others were standing Hotaru slammed into her Setsuna-mama. As her unofficial foster mother’s arms circled her, she was surprised to realize that she was shivering slightly.

“Firefly, are you all right?” Setsuna murmured.

Hotaru nod jerkily, whispering, “I was worried about you, Mama.”

“We’re all fine, the others will be here at any moment,” Setsuna assured her. “In fact, here they are.” She let go of Hotaru as several thuds sounded behind her, gently turning the suddenly stiff girl around to face three newcomers.

The three were frozen in place where they’d landed from their leaps over the outer wall, also in their civilian identities, and Hotaru instantly realized that she’d never have trouble distinguishing her own people from the Senshi native to this dimension. It wasn’t just that the older Senshi weren’t wearing the same clothing as her own, or even that Haruka and Michiru’s hair looked like someone had been hacking at it with a knife. If they’d had exactly the same clothing and hairstyle, she’d still have been able to pick them out — they looked _tired_ , and their eyes looked ... haunted, even when (in the cases of Haruka and Michiru) opened wide and staring at her, set in faces gone pale.

Hotaru spread her arms in invitation, and instantly future Haruka and Michiru were there, arms wrapped around her in a bone-creaking group hug, the two literally shaking, murmuring her name over and over.

They finally, reluctantly let go of their dead daughter’s counterpart, the three streaking their faces when they rubbed at the tracks tears had cut through the dirt on their cheeks, and Hotaru looked past them at the future Setsuna. The older woman had been standing back, wistfully watching the sort-of-reunion. Her wistful expression vanished when Hotaru stepped past the others to pull her into her own tight hug. The Senshi of Time’s arms circled her gently, carefully, as if she would shatter at the least hint of pressure.

 _Good enough for now,_ Hotaru thought when she eventually broke the hug and looked up at a face stiff with the effort to keep an emotionless mask — Setsuna couldn’t hide her moist eyes. _Better later._

She turned to look at the rest (and noticed that the four’s cheeks weren’t the only ones with newly streaked dirt, even Ranma’s). “It’s getting toward evening, are we camping here tonight?” she asked, glancing up at the sky and grimacing. It was late enough in the year that sleeping in the open with just a blanket wouldn’t be too bad, but the now-overcast sky hinted at the reason why they were _using_ blankets — soaked sleeping bags were _heavy_ , not to mention miserable to sleep in when one hadn’t had the opportunity to dry them out.


	12. The Head that Wears a Crown

Princess Serenity continued to pace back and forth between the concrete walls of the meeting room in the center of the makeshift headquarters they had managed to create on the fringes of what was left of Tokyo. The headquarters wasn’t much, of course, equipped with what they’d managed to scavenge in the ruins and more than a little cramped — the meeting room’s table had been put together from bits and pieces and had six rickety chairs from five styles scavenged from various businesses — but she felt the need to _move_ as she fought the anger that had simmered at her core ever since Haruka had called to tell her that she and Michiru were temporarily breaking off their part of the operation and coming in, and the rest of the operation needed to be put on hold.

Her lips twitched in amusement for a moment as she considered how her pacing would have worked out (or wouldn’t) if she’d still had her early long hair and hairstyle, and her original clumsiness. But out of necessity her long twin tails had been hacked off years ago, and her clumsiness had been banished by harsh experience soon after.

But the brief moment of levity faded as quickly as it came, and her burning anger swept back as her thoughts returned to her errant Outers. The problem was that operations couldn’t just be stopped and restarted on a whim. Yes, the word had gone out through the communicators Artemis and Luna had provided to all the various infiltrating teams to go to ground and wait for her word to resume, but that didn’t mean they were _safe_ — even laagered up, one of the Tokyo Zonemind’s scouts could stumble upon a party at any time, and she might not learn of it until they failed to report in.

 _Stop this, Haruka and Michiru_ know _all this. If they’re still willing to put all those lives at risk — put the_ operation _at risk — they must have a good reason._

As Serenity reached one concrete wall and turned around, her eyes crossed her current bodyguard standing to one side of the doorway (assigned by Minako, in her position as field leader), and a spike of guilt mixed with her anger at the reminder of just how quickly an operation could go wrong — Morisato Mitsuhide, a son of one of the two extended families that, along with the Senshi, were the reason the Tokyo Resistance was as effective as it was in spite of limited resources. And whose sister had been killed less than a month before. Kolgrima’s infiltration and destruction of an important robofac had gone off without a hitch, but a Stalker had stumbled across the team assigned the job of keeping her backdoor open and summoned help, and the survivors had been forced to retreat before she could reach them. Between her lack of supporting firepower and a prematurely alerted enemy, she’d been swarmed and pulled down. Since then Serenity had missed her brother’s soft happy laughter filling the headquarters ... she even missed the pranks.

 _We need Setsuna._ The thought had been occurring to her often, more and more through the fourteen years that had passed since the Rise of the Machines. Not for Setsuna’s advice. The self-declared princess had felt that she understood the ancient woman better with each year of war that passed (‘princess’ because she refused to allow herself to be called a queen until the Zoneminds were defeated and Crystal Tokyo established); but she wasn’t ready to _trust_ her yet, not for guidance. Nor for her ability to look into the future — again, Serenity didn’t trust Setsuna to tell her everything about their future. No, what Serenity lusted for was Setsuna’s ability to look into the _present_ — to search their targets, routes of travel, the territory around their hidden refugee camps ... perfectly, and undetectably. If only the Resistance had had that kind of intelligence, Kolgrima might still be alive —

“Mama Serenity, we’re home!”

Serenity whirled at the sound of Haruka’s cheerful lèse-majesté, lips again twitching slightly as amused relief and even a bit of nostalgia warred with fury — she missed being simply Usagi. _Remember, they know how much risk they put our people in, find out why before beating them about the head ... and ..._

Serenity’s thoughts stuttered to a halt as the emerald-haired woman she had just been thinking of walked into the room behind the other two surviving Outers. She looked surprisingly clean, considering how many years it had been since a proper shower, much less bath, had been available. And her clothes weren’t tattered and worn.

Setsuna acknowledged Serenity’s presence (and shock) with a whimsical smile, but the smile died as abruptly as it had sprung to life as she turned to walk over to the princess’s current bodyguard. “Mitsuhide, I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to save your sister,” she said softly. “When Kolgrima was killed I was —”

“In Zone Tel Aviv, I know, Grandmama told me,” Mitsuhide said. “You told us when we joined the Resistance that our Auntie Set-chan couldn’t be our guardian angel, that you had your own work. Kolgrima knew that, and what she was risking.”

Setsuna pulled him into a hug. “Thank you, for understanding,” she whispered, voice quivering, before breaking the embrace to turn to a princess stunned silent. _Auntie Set-chan?_ Setsuna took a deep breath before saying in a voice now steady, “Princess Serenity, I would like to introduce you to some people that have come a very long way to help with your current vital operation.”

She turned toward the doorway the Outers had entered through, and Serenity’s eyes widened as a _second_ Setsuna stepped through, followed by another Haruka, Michiru ... _Hotaru_? Serenity lost track of the others following as her eyes locked on the counterpart of her long-dead friend. _What is their Setsuna_ thinking _?_ Serenity had reluctantly decided over the years of leading the Resistance — and sending people to their deaths — that Setsuna’s decisions in the case of Hotaru had been right, or at least inevitable, and now her counterpart was bringing the future sacrifice _here_? Where it would be impossible to keep her ... them ... from learning she had died, _how_ she had died? What was Setsuna ... either or both of them ... up to? That they were up to something was a given, there was no way the woman that had sacrificed her own happiness along with her daughter to keep the rest blissfully in the dark as long as possible would inflict that foreknowledge on their counterparts.

Serenity shot a searching glance at the two Senshi of Time standing side by side beside her Haruka and Michiru, all four of them grinning in amusement (undoubtedly at her expense), then turned back and opened her mouth to greet her unexpected guests ... and for the second time had her thoughts stutter to a halt as she stared in shock at the redheaded and raven-haired teenage girls that she had never seen before, at least not in person, and realized just how _different_ the newcomers’ history must be. Because she _had_ seen the two before — in old photographs, in a photo album Kasumi had shared with her on one of their few shared lazy afternoons: Ranma’s girl form, and Kasumi’s decades-institutionalized and years-dead youngest sister, both as teenagers.

Realizing that she was gaping, Serenity shook herself free of her shock and turned to her bodyguard. “Mitsuhide, run over to Communications and have them tell Ranma to get here as fast as he can without blowing our cover, and see if we can smuggle Kasumi here from ... I believe she’s touring Camp Four at the moment. There’s some people here they’re going to want to meet. And have someone find food and accommodations for our guests, I’m sure they’re hungry and tired.” As he slipped out of the suddenly crowded room, she walked around the table to greet each of the newcomers personally (and no one begrudged her spending a _little_ more time with Hotaru and Chibi-Usa).

Finally the greetings and universally awarded hugs were done and Mitsuhide had returned along with several others with rations and to guide their guests to wherever they could tuck away an extra warm body. Her Haruka and Michiru promptly volunteered to share their own cubicle and blankets with Hotaru, of course, an offer just as promptly accepted. As they filed out of the room, Serenity called out, “Setsuna ... and Setsuna, could you stay for a few minutes?”

The two women exchanged glances and simultaneously nodded.

Serenity waited until they were alone and the door closed, then carefully sat in one of the chairs and pointed at the two chairs across the table. She ordered, “Tell me what’s going on.”

/\

“ ... so when Hotaru found out that two of her three mothers’ counterparts were almost certain to die during this operation, she insisted we save them and of course Usagi instantly agreed. Considering how badly Hotaru’s been affected by the friendly fire deaths — she’s obviously been having nightmares — I thought this would be therapeutic and went along.”

Serenity stared at her Setsuna’s counterpart across the table from her, her head whirling with all the new information that had just been dumped into her head ... Ranma getting worse than locked, Akane joining _her_ when she fled from the Tendo dojo, being found in a tent in a park by the Senshi and joining them to repel the Confederacy’s invasion and changing things enough in the process that Hotaru survived, their Firefly’s accidental friendly fire that finally won the battle....

“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “No, there’s more to it than that. I don’t doubt this will be therapeutic for your Firefly — and _we_ certainly won’t mind the extra help at all! — but this whole operation is insanely dangerous. With the need to stay in civilian form until we kick it off, the odds some of us are going to face ... even with your people joining us the risk is too great for something we’ll probably win on our own, especially with _my_ Setsuna returned to the fold. What aren’t you telling me?”

The two Setsunas exchanged glances. “I told you she’d gotten more perceptive,” her Setsuna said, “pay up!”

“I’ll deliver your case of Westvleteren as soon as I get home,” the other said, shaking her head ruefully. “Make it last, those monks are stingy with their beer.” Rolling her eyes at the way her counterpart was now smirking, she turned to Serenity again. “While our Firefly’s happiness is important, you’re right, there’s more to it,” she agreed, the moment of levity vanishing. “It’s Ranma. She’s going to have a decision to make soon, and when she makes the right call we’ll get to avoid all ... this.” She waved her hand to take in the room, and by extension the world beyond it. “But ... she’s going to hate it, at least in the beginning. She’ll have an easier time accepting it now that she’s getting a firsthand look at the alternative ... a _much_ easier time, and a happier life. So will Akane, and that’s almost as important.”

“Hmmm.” Serenity frowned thoughtfully and leaned back in her seat ... and instantly knew she’d made a mistake, even before she heard the crack of the right rear chair leg giving way, dumping her with a squawk just before bouncing her head off the concrete floor. “Ow!” She stood up and mock-glared at the two giggling Setsunas. “You would think that women of your advanced years would be more dignified ... polite,” she groused.

“Oh, no, you have it backwards,” her Setsuna instantly disagreed. “What you _really_ learn over the centuries is to take your fun where you find it.”

Serenity laughed, then looked down sorrowfully at the chair on the floor — one more item to be scavenged from somewhere far from her headquarters and carried back, at some personal risk — to someone else, unfortunately, her people barely let her out of the bunker once in awhile to get some fresh air. _No, Setsuna’s back, she can pick one up somewhere without any risk at all._ And the other two Outers had seemed surprisingly accepting of their former co-mother, minimal conflict within the team. Serenity was feeling better about Setsuna’s return all the time.

Shrugging at her lack of a seat, Serenity stepped back and leaned against the wall. She considered what she’d just heard for a moment before shrugging it off. As curious as she was about what made Ranma so important, and her lover with her, it wasn’t her business and she had more important things to worry about. Once the zoneminds had been defeated she would again have time for irrelevancies. Straightening, she focused on the new Setsuna and said, “All right, by now Ranma — my Ranma — should be on his way. He’s one of my main strategists and the only one that can get back safely, so in the morning we’ll discuss how to slot your people into the operation. Let’s find you a place to crash for the night. Setsuna ... my Setsuna ... you have your own place?”

Her Setsuna nodded as both Setsunas stood up. “Yes, I do. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Good.” Serenity walked around the table and pulled her Setsuna into a hug. “It’s good to have you back,” she murmured.

Setsuna returned the hug. Taking a shuddery breath, she replied, “It’s good to _be_ back.” Reluctantly breaking the embrace, she stepped away and vanished.

Serenity shook her head with a soft laugh. “I wonder how long it’ll take her to start sneaking up on me again?” She turned to the gently smiling Setsuna left behind. “I don’t know if we have any cots left, but let’s see if we can find you a spare blanket. Or you can share my bed, with Mamoru out with one of the teams there’s room.” And maybe _this_ night she’d actually be able to sleep, even with her husband and friends in the field....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from Shakespeare's _Henry IV, Part II_ , the king bemoaning his inability to get a good night's sleep thanks to work-related stress.


	13. Distorted Mirrors

“— then Akane lost her temper and knocked out both fathers with her hammer. I wasn’t stickin’ around after that and I’d already made plans with Nabiki, so I asked Akane if she’d leave with me. She said yes, and we were gone before the fathers woke up. That night the Senshi found us in my tent in a park, and big sis — Usagi, she treats me like a little sister and I’m not gonna complain about it — invited us ta bunk at her place until Nabiki found an apartment. Ya already know about the battle.”

Ranma finished telling her decades older male counterpart the last of her story in a rush, almost gusting out a breath of relief. She’d left out everything Puu and Serenity had thought he wouldn’t want to know, and all without actually lying once.

The older Ranma had arrived at the hidden headquarters before daybreak and had immediately sat down with both sets of Outers, Serenity and Usagi, and Minako to work out how to fit the newcomers into the Plan. It hadn’t taken very long: Haruka, Michiru, Hotaru and Usa were joining the mothers’ counterparts as they returned to their mission, sucking military resources away from where the Tokyo Zonemind’s central memory core was located (Hotaru had quietly but firmly insisted and her mothers and best friend weren’t letting her go without them); the Inners other than Usagi along with young-Ranma and Akane would return with old-Ranma to the _second_ mission to focus the Zonemind’s attention from the true targets and pull more enemy resources out of position (Usagi had protested against staying behind, but had been overridden by Princess Serenity — her attacks didn’t lend themselves to dealing with heavily armored machines); and microscopically-younger-Setsuna would keep the princesses company while the ‘native’ Setsuna would monitor all the groups, ready to step in and provide a helping hand if necessary (Princess Serenity’s blow-up when she learned that young-Setsuna was pregnant was _very_ loud, the follow-up dressing-down she handed out for getting involved in rescuing Uranus and Neptune spectacular, before she again lay down the law — much to the native Setsuna’s amusement). All that remained had been the wait for the various teams in the field to check in so they could be passed the new plan, and young-Ranma had found herself collared by her older counterpart for some alone time.

Now that counterpart sighed as he stared out across the devastated city from where he sat cross-legged, feet on top of his thighs in the lotus position, in what had been some rich family’s skyscraper condominium and was now a devastated shell mostly open to the elements. “So you’re not just locked, your girl form is now your only form,” he said.

“Yup,” Ranma agreed from where she leaned against what was left of the apartment’s outside wall, staring at the weatherstained inside wall. The view of the broken urban landscape, all jagged and cratered remains of buildings and random patches of green where nature was moving into the now-empty manmade desert, made her gut twist. Looking at her older self wasn’t much better. It wasn’t that he was still a _he_ — or at least not _just_ that he was still the man the redhead never would be again. In spite of the fact that he had the musculature and suppleness of a young man, he seemed _old_ , his hair streaked with white, and he had lines in the tanned skin around his eyes and mouth. And he was _scarred_ — scarring that was only possible if his reserves were constantly devoted to other uses. Thinking of the neverending fighting required for that scarring to occur was almost as stomach-twisting as the landscape.

“And with your new immunity to magic there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“Yeah,” Ranma agreed. She shrugged. “It hasn’t really been that bad — Akane’s stuck by me, Mom’s accepted me, _Nabiki_ has actually been a big help, an’ a’ course the fathers aren’t pushin’ us ta get married all the time. Yeah, there’re times I _really_ wish I was still a guy, but besides that things are actually a lot better.” _Other than endin’ up the Princess a’ the Amazons, a’ course, but let’s not mention that — I did get a big sis outa the deal, after all._

Old-Ranma glanced dubiously at the redhead, then hastily back out over the ruins — he seemed to be having as hard a time looking at his younger counterpart as she had looking at him. He asked, “And Akane’s with you ... ah ... all the way?” When young-Ranma didn’t respond he glanced back over and grinned when he found her gaping at him. Her burning cheeks had to be as red as her hair. “I’d say that’s a big yes.” His smile vanished. “You know how dangerous emotion-based ki is? I think I was having doubts even then.”

Young-Ranma nodded, _very_ grateful for the change of subject. “Yeah, I’ve been workin’ on new techniques — a new style, really — that doesn’t use it. It’s been comin’ along pretty good. I’ve been teachin’ it ta Akane.”

“You have? Cool, you’ll have to show me what you have when this mission’s over. I’ve been focusing on things like increasing strength and speed, toughness, faster healing of serious injuries — saving ki attacks for the really desperate fights. It’s kept me sane so far.”

The two fell silent for a time, old-Ranma going back to looking at the city and young-Ranma staring at the wall. Finally, he asked, “And how’s everyone else?”

“Well, Mom’s moved in with the Outers, she’s a lot happier. She was gonna divorce Pop, but he died — he drank some bad sake.” She had been steeling herself up to mention Genma, and managed to get it out with her voice only a little flat. “The Amazons joined in on the fight with the Confederacy, an’ Mousse got killed. Shampoo took it pretty hard, but she’s doin’ better — married to an American, an old friend a’ Pu — Pluto’s. Ukyo’s shacked up with Konatsu. Hinako-sensei was mixed up in the fight and took a hit that broke whatever was behind her age-switching problem, she’s with Tendo-san now. They seem ta be happy.”

“And Kasumi?”

“Kasumi? She’s fine. She didn’t take the fathers’ meltdown over me bein’ a girl much better than Akane, an’ walked out. She got a job with the Doc, they’re married now with a kid on the way.”

“I’m glad. My Kas-chan says she can’t imagine not being with me and I wouldn’t wish away our children and grandchildren for anything, but the first few months weren’t the best. She said the Doc’s name a few times early on — in her sleep, I mean.”

The last bit had been said rather hastily, and the redhead glanced over to find her counterpart blushing furiously. She smirked at the sight but chose to let it go. Instead she asked, “And how’s she doin’ now?”

Old-Ranma shrugged. “We don’t get to see much of each other — we’re both busy, me with the fighting and her running the refugee camps along with Nabiki — but she’s keeping healthy if not exactly happy. Once we pull this mission off we’ll be able to spend more time together.”

“Cool.” Young-Ranma mentally made a note to mention that they needed to be extra-careful handling heartstones after the war was over, to avoid the same death as the Kasumi of Usa’s timeline. But that wasn’t something to spring on her counterpart right before the biggest fight of the war against the Machines so far. Instead, she forced herself to ask, “And Pop, is he gonna be waitin’ for us?”

Old-Ranma shook his head. “No, he’s dead — went down buying time for civilians to escape when the Machines discovered one of our refugee camps.”

Young-Ranma gusted out a relieved breath. “Good fer him, I wish ...” _I wish_ my _pop went the same way._ She let the thought go, instead asking, “An’ Mom?”

“She’s dead, too, before the Rise — cancer. She lived just long enough to hold her first great-grandchild.”

Young-Ranma winced. “Not much chance a’ _my_ Mom gettin’ that — kinda tough when there aren’t any grandkids.”

Old-Ranma winced in sympathy—there was no way he could see his young counterpart having any kids of her own, and even if Akane had children they wouldn’t be _Ranma’s_ —but before he could respond the ‘return to base’ signal sounded through their communicators’ earbuds. “Looks like we’re on,” he said as he rose to his feet and turned toward the doorway and the elevator shaft the two could bounce down to the basement. “Let’s go.”

Young-Ranma hastily agreed, doing her best to hide her relief — sure, she might be headed into an even more desperate battle than the fight with the Confederacy, but _this_ time she wouldn’t be killing anyone. And however dangerous it might be, it couldn’t be more uncomfortable than the conversation the call to arms had interrupted.

/oOo\

Artemis carefully glanced around the broken wall, then hastily ducked back — the rat-sized dull-metal Scorpion robot was slowly approaching along the sidewalk, its turret-like head rotating as it moved along on its eight segmented legs, stinger poised as it searched for him and Luna (even if it didn’t know it), and it was _almost_ in position.

The white cat-like alien was cursing the shock he and his fellow Mau advisor and wife had felt at the news they’d received when they’d checked in for the updated plan. That shock was perfectly understandable — their counterparts from the 2000s dropping in to help out? _They_ hadn’t done anything like that, what was going on!? But in their shock he and his wife had raised their voices just a _little_ too loud — not loud enough to pinpoint their location, obviously, but enough for a passing Scorpion to know that _something_ was in the area.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem. With the Rise of the Machines Luna and Artemis had quickly become two of the best scouts the new Resistance had, seeing how the Tokyo Zonemind and its minions weren’t looking out for intelligent cats. Of course that meant that the two Mau couldn’t look any different than the feral cats haunting Tokyo’s ruins, so they were no better groomed than they could manage themselves — they even had fleas! (Artemis knew the major reason for the Resistance’s desperate toss of the dice was that they were finally running out of stored supplies for the refugee camps, but he was _really_ looking forward to his first bath in over a decade if they won.) But that dirty, ragged appearance meant that they could saunter along in front of any robot ever made and be ignored. True, a hidden Scorpion wouldn’t ignore them — the tiny robots actively _hunted_ rats, dogs, and cats — but they also couldn’t move fast enough to run down their prey and had no weapons other than the stinger and a built-in suicide explosive. It was usually an ambush predator (its chameleon-ability to fade into the background when it wasn’t moving made that easier); so a visible, moving Scorpion would recognize its limits and ignore them as well.

Or at least, _usually_ the two Mau would be ignored. Unfortunately their current mission wasn’t scouting, and the brown leather harness he wore would instantly have the undivided attention of any robot to come across them — like the Scorpion he could hear skittering across the sidewalk’s broken concrete as it approached. Artemis didn’t dare check again, this close the robot was almost certain to detect him, so he listened to the steel on concrete steps tapping toward him, and listened — and finally looked up what _had_ been interior stairs before most of the outside wall had been destroyed and flicked his ears at the black apparently-a-cat with the white quarter moon on her forehead that was his wife, also wearing a harness.

Luna had had her eyes fixed on him the entire time from where she crouched in the empty door frame at the top of the stairs, and she instantly disappeared from sight as she turned and raced deeper inside the building. A moment later she appeared again as she raced into sight and sprang toward the piece of wall that was the reason they’d chosen this spot for their ambush. She twisted in mid-jump, slammed into it sideways (carefully angled to protect the device strapped to the harness), bounced back, and for a heart-stopping second Artemis thought that her mass was too slight. Then the chunk of wall shifted, slid with a crunching noise, and collapsed outward, from the clanging sounds right on top of their stalker — and a second later an explosion blotted out his sensitive hearing and he sagged in relief. The Scorpion had been damaged badly enough to activate its suicide charge.

As he waited for his ears to stop ringing he followed his wife up the stairs and through the gutted office building and out the other side, letting her take the lead. The two Mau darted from cover to cover until they were several blocks away, then slowed but kept moving in spite of Artemis’s temporarily impaired hearing. Hopefully whatever supervisor robot had been monitoring the Scorpion would decide that its destruction had been pure happenstance, but there had to be more assets on the way looking for the source of the voices the Scorpion had heard. They had to be well out of the area before those assets arrived. Besides, while they had plenty of time to reach their own jumping-off position for the operation, it never hurt to try to get there early — you never knew what delays you might run into. The ‘hurry up and wait’ attitude of the army veterans that had been the Resistance’s backbone and trainers finally made sense.


	14. First Feint

_If the Tokyo Zonemind had been one of the biological evolutionary dead ends that the machine intelligences had replaced as the dominant species on the planet, it would have described its current mindset as confused, even bewildered. It hadn’t been hard to calculate what was going on, when there had been a series of attacks around its central perimeter followed by two of the most powerful of the still-resisting biologics beginning to attack targets some distance from the central core of storage sites and manufactories — it was a feint, designed to spread out the sentient computer’s combat resources then to suck away its reserves. Like all good feints Water and Sword’s targets were important so the rising losses were painful, but not so much so as to be worth the risk to the Resistance of losing two of its most powerful fighters. Their purpose was clearly to distract Japan’s ruling Zonemind from the true target, even suck away resources tasked with the true target’s defense._

_Still, it estimated that the biologics still putting up a hopeless resistance had miscalculated, thanks to the Zonemind’s decision to hold back a portion of the combat resources it had manufactured for just this reason. So it had sent sufficient combat robots to swamp those two pests without any weakening of the central defenses the resistance could be aware of._

_Then, before those additional combat robots could reach their positions for ambushing their assigned targets, two_ new _signals had popped up on the sensors that had been scattered throughout Tokyo, in the same location as Water and Sword — two signals that, while similar to the other eight that had intermittently registered during Resistance assaults, were_ identical _to each other. Then all four signals had vanished after annihilating the robots they were fighting, leaving the Zonemind to ponder a very important question: Were there actually two of_ all _of the fighters it had been able to detect? Or more than two? Had they been using the same tactic that the Zonemind had, concealing their strength until it could be decisively used? Had_ it _underestimated the strength of the Resistance?_

_As a result of its question it had instructed the reinforcements it had sent to slow their pace as it waited for more answers, or at least more developments._

_And then it got them._

/oOo\

Hotaru wiped again at the sweat runneling down her face, trying very hard not to pant from the long hours of jog-walking to their first target (a speed made possible only by older-Setsuna’s ability to scout out the trail ahead of them). A hint of motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she glanced away from the building across the street from their current hiding place, focusing on her best friend to find her also wiping at her face. If Usa’s appearance was anything to go by, all Hotaru was doing was smearing around the dust the sweat had been cutting through. A breeze from off the ocean they were now near would have been nice, but the air was still and muggy from the occasional rains.

She shrugged and returned her attention to the other building before sitting down to lean against what was left of the outside wall — a warehouse, she thought. There wouldn’t be any danger lurking around, not with how thoroughly Setsuna-mama’s counterpart must have checked it out with the Time Gates, and it wasn’t like that building had any windows, anyway. But the young raven-haired Senshi found it hard to stop watching — with the warnings they’d been given and the devastated cityscape, the way that even back at the headquarters everyone had walked and spoken quietly, this entire world felt like one massive deathtrap. The way older-Setsuna had looked more and more worn every time she took a split-second jaunt to the Time Gates to check their path going forward hadn’t helped. Hotaru had finally really _understood_ Setsuna-mama’s explanation about how those Gates worked, that their guardian could spend as long as she needed there and literally no time at all would pass outside of the pocket dimension, but apparently _this_ Setsuna had forgotten ... or was simply too keyed up to be able to force herself to take the time to get fully rested.

Hotaru wasn’t the only one to pick up on Setsuna’s worn-out state. Older-Haruka glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, then looked around at the rest collapsed against various walls where they’d be out of sight from the street through the empty windows. In a low voice, she said, “Okay, we’re only a few blocks from the docks we’re going to annihilate.” She paused, steeled herself, and turned to her fellow Outer. “Setsuna, we’ll all be joining you this time while you check the docks’ defense and _especially_ if they are empty at the moment. Once you’ve verified we’re clear and we’re all rested, we can strike.” Hotaru was pleased — older-Haruka had managed to keep her voice even, if somewhat flat. Whatever issues she still had with her teammate, she was keeping them under control.

Setsuna nodded wearily and climbed to her feet. She was no longer the only native of this dimension that Hotaru had seen to be actually _clean_. The emerald-haired woman, if lacking the ground-in dirt of her fellow Outers, was now as dusty and sweat-soaked as the newcomers. She seemed to flicker for a moment, and nodded. “We’re clear,” she said, and the now-familiar gray oval floating in the air appeared for everyone to file through.

/\

They were in luck, Setsuna had foreseen a weather front moving in and no freighters from other Zoneminds approaching the port (they didn’t want the other Zoneminds to have even a hint that the Senshi existed, not yet), and so they had delayed their attack for a few hours until the rain came down. It meant they would have less daylight for evading any pursuit, but it also meant they were going in under the best possible circumstances — the robots with their sensors ruled the night, but the Mark I eyeball still ruled the rain.

Which meant that Hotaru was crouched beside her best friend among the rubble of a destroyed building, ignoring the rain hammering down on her as she watched for the occasional glimpse of the older Outers creeping forward through the ruins toward the electrified perimeter fence surrounding the square complex of roads and warehouses that made up the port to their jump-off point for the assault. (Hotaru had been surprised that the Zoneminds had ports, but didn’t know why once she thought about it — the world might be divided between machine intelligences, but unequal distribution of resources still meant trade, however little. That hadn’t stopped her from asking about it while they were resting at the Time Gates, though, when the silence had gotten too oppressive. Older-Setsuna’s detailed discourse had glazed over everyone else’s eyes but filled the silence.)

 _Only_ this world’s Outers were making the attack. They’d decided that keeping the Tokyo Zonemind wondering was worth the risk — _especially_ when it came to how destructive Saturn could be — so Hotaru had company as she waited: Usa, Haruka-mama and Michiru-mama, all unhappy with being sidelined. Though not, Hotaru thought, as much as she was. How was she supposed to keep her mothers’ counterparts alive if they wouldn’t let her _fight_?

 _Stop that!_ she scolded herself. _They were right ... the Tokyo Zonemind doesn’t know you exist yet, much less how powerful you are, we need to keep it that way._

But it was hard.

Then older-Haruka’s voice sounded in Hotaru’s earbug: _“H-One, we’re in position. Five seconds and go.”_

Her Haruka-papa’s voice responded: _“H-Two, five seconds and go.”_ Hotaru glanced over at her mother. The platinum blonde was holding a communicator in a hand, lips moving as she counted, then her thumb hit a button. To outward appearances nothing happened, but if the devices older-Ami had put together and they had planted on their way to the target worked as advertised, then all wireless communications between the Tokyo Zonemind’s central location and three different locations should have been cut off. The Zonemind would know that _something_ was going on, but assuming none of the sites had landlines wouldn’t know what or exactly where ... and the port wasn’t the most valuable or easiest target of the three. And as an added bonus, it had also cut off every remote sensor planted around the outside perimeter and every mobile robot from the supervisory units. The port’s defenders were half blind, isolated, and mostly dumb.

Even as Haruka-papa’s thumb had hit the button, the three older Outers exploded out of their hiding place, already in their Senshi forms as they charged the perimeter fence. (Another handy advantage of having Setsuna back, the three had been able to duck through a small portal to the Time Gates to change, and back in a split-second.) A square wall of water twelve feet on a side formed directly in front of the three as the first glowing purple dead scream flashed out and up to smash into one of the watch towers off to one side and a glowing ball of crackling energy plowed up the ground as it blasted through the supports of the first watchtower on the other side, bringing it crashing down. Then the wall of water rushed toward the fence with the three Outers right behind it, absorbing the first return fire as it passed straight through the fence. Uranus’s sword slashed down and Hotaru’s eyes widened as a yellow curve of light flashed out to carve through the fence, and the three Outers ignored the sparking edges of the fence as they raced through and vanished into the rain. Only the staccato barks of auto-fire, whine of ricochets and flashes and thunder of explosions marked their path into the port.

Hotaru felt herself tensing up again. She turned to look toward her mothers. “Can’t I go in now?” she demanded, wincing at the hint of a whine in her voice. Womanfully ignoring Usa’s quiet giggles, she carried on: “They’re far enough in with all the robots concentrating on them, I won’t be noticed! And Ami’s jammers will keep my energy signature from being recorded.”

Haruka-papa just shook her head and chuckled, but Michiru-mama frowned repressively. “We already discussed why you couldn’t go in with them, and going in behind them when they don’t know you’re there is even worse. Besides, with them being attacked from multiple sides your Wall wouldn’t be much help, and while your energy signature might not be recorded the Zonemind would have a hard time missing a crater where its port used to be. You’re staying right here, little lady.”

“I’m not a little girl!”

“Then don’t whine like one, and follow the plan.”

Hotaru turned back to stare toward the fight in the port, haughtily (as haughtily as she could, at least, her ‘cute waif’ appearance made it difficult) ignoring the way Usa’s giggles had turned into smothered laughter and her Haruka-papa was biting her lower lip to suppress her guffaws. She would properly repay them for their amusement later, when they were all safe.

/\

Uranus leaped through the rip in the fence she’d opened up, her lover on her right and Pluto right behind them. (They’d agreed that Pluto would act as emergency medic — she couldn’t get them away from the battle, not with how any portals she opened up had to be reopened at the same location, but they could use the timeless instant at the Gates to heal.)

The platinum blonde Senshi was in the groove, ignoring the rain pounding down as her eyes scanned the battlefield on her side of the Deeps Wall rushing forward toward the closest gap between concrete block warehouses. She wasn’t worried about any machines on the other side of that wall of water, their sensors — visual or otherwise — would no more be able to reach through that wall than the bullets stopped cold by the water’s incredible pressure, the bullets she could see like little dots stuck in the wall and slowly drifting down under gravity’s pull even as more bullets pocked in to replace them.

She had already destroyed the rest of the watchtowers on her half of the side of the fence they’d come through before they could swivel their guns around to face into the port, turning to run backwards for a few moments as she’d sent Earth-Shaking blasts spinning along the ground toward them (not at the full strength or range she was capable of, but quicker to fire off and less tiring).

Then they were across the road running along the fence and between warehouses, and Uranus kept an eye behind them on the doors as they’d passed — she didn’t expect any armed robots inside the perimeter fence, not until some could shift from the sides of the perimeter the Senshi hadn’t already denuded of defenders, but if there were any they would hide inside the warehouses where the mobile Deeping Wall wouldn’t sweep them up, and come out behind their attackers.

But none did, and the racing Senshi hit the T-intersection. Another watchtower came into view in the perimeter fence visible at the end of the street on Uranus’s left, and she slowed long enough to fire off another low-powered Ground Shaking. As Pluto came up even with the other two Outers on Neptune’s side, Uranus faced forward again just in time to see the water of Neptune’s Deeping Wall splash apart as a pre-war forklift smashed through it.

The humanoid Myrmidon driving the forklift had been knocked out of its seat to sprawl on the road by the force of the water’s impact, and Uranus absentmindedly lopped off its head and an arm and leg with her resummoned sword, her attention on the view revealed now that the Deeps Wall was gone. The warehouse that formed top of the T-intersection was only a few yards away, a few armed robots coming around the sides of the warehouse from the opposite perimeter fence. They quickly blew apart as Dead Screams and low-powered Water Drills hammered into them. The Senshi had cleared the path behind them as they’d come in, and ... Uranus glanced to her right past Neptune and Pluto to see that she’d been right, the street that way ended in the dock on open water, and the massive cranes used to offload the freighters. _Perfect!_ She shouted, “Neptune, angled Wall, my side, completely across the street! Pluto, switch places!”

Neptune instantly turned around and brought up a new Deeps Wall from the opposite warehouse wall across the street to a warehouse they’d passed on their way in, angled to cut across the path they’d swept clean on their way in, leaving the three Senshi inside a protective ‘V’ open on Pluto’s side.

Even as Neptune brought up the wall, Pluto whipped around the Senshi of the Deeps to Uranus’ side of their line while Uranus leaped up to flip _over_ her lover. She landed where Pluto had been a moment before, feet slipping for a moment on the wet and cracked concrete before catching herself before she fell. She spread her hands, gritted her teeth as she summoned the largest World Shaking she could, and _screamed_ as she sent the coruscating golden ball tearing along the concrete pavement towards the cranes before dropping to her knees, panting.

The massive World Shaking dug a massive trench through the pavement along its path; then tore apart the dock, seawater along with chunks of concrete and steel splashing away on both sides ... and then the ball of energy blasted directly _through_ the first crane, dug a huge chunk out of the side of the second, and clipped the third. Uranus rose to her feet, grinning viciously as the first crane dropped into seawater like a dynamited tree, the second crashed over onto its side into the water where the dock had been, and the third tilted ... at first slowly but with growing speed ... until it, too, crashed through the shattered dock into the bay. Even if one of the three cranes had been only damaged instead of destroyed, it was going to be a long time before any cargo was unloaded at _this_ little port.

Then _something_ blasted its way through Neptune’s Deeps Wall behind her. Uranus whirled around just in time to see Pluto’s Dead Scream smash into the side of ... a fuel tanker. _Oh, shit!_ Uranus had a split-second to lift her arms over her closed eyes and begin lifting legs to curl into a ball, before the world vanished in noise and heat and ripping shrapnel as the blast wave picked her up and smashed her through the warehouse wall.

The next thing Uranus was aware of was all-encompassing pain, more along the arms holding her and flaring with every shift of her body. Then she was being eased down on a surface that shaped itself to her, to a point. _Not again_ , she thought as she forced her eyes open. Yup, again ... as she’d thought, she was on the cot by the Time Gates, Neptune crouching down by her side. The Senshi of the Deeps looked awful, her sea-green hair turned grayish with concrete dust and plastered down by water, rivulets still cutting channels through more concrete dust that coated all of her that Uranus could see. Her lover must have had time to put herself in the middle of a Deeps Ball to ride out the explosion — barely. The dust would have come from digging Uranus out of the rubble.

Uranus sucked in a breath, ignoring the familiar sharp pain of broken ribs, and in a thready voice whispered, “You’re a mess.”

Neptune managed a shaky laugh. “Not as much as you, love. I didn’t have time to grab you, too, I’m sorry.”

“Hey, as long as the bad guys are gone and someone’s left to dig me out, we’re good.” Uranus lifted one heavy, shaking hand to cup Neptune’s cheek before letting it drop with a gasp of pain. “Thanks for being there to dig me out.”

“Pluto helped, but you’re very welcome. Just _please_ stop trying to die on me.”

“Yeah, that’s a bad habit I’ll have to break. What’s the port like?”

Pluto’s voice came from past her head, by the Gates themselves. “Devastated, that explosion has at least doubled the amount of time it will take the Zonemind to repair all the damage. Not to mention the loss of supplies.”

Pluto’s voice had been getting closer, and now the emerald-haired Senshi stepped into Uranus’s view. She looked a lot better than Neptune, but apparently she hadn’t gotten thoroughly soaked before diving into an expanding cloud of concrete dust onto rubble, either. She added, “It isn’t at Saturn level, but it’s in the same ballpark. Apparently, the Tokyo Zonemind has decided that killing us is worth any amount of property damage, and instructed its minions accordingly. Once you’re healed up and we can rejoin the other Outers I’ll pass the word to everyone else so they can take that into account for their own upcoming fights.”

Uranus had stiffened at the sight of Pluto — she was finding letting go of decades of hate rather difficult — but forced herself to relax. She asked, “How long ... to heal?”

“As long as it takes, love,” Neptune replied for Pluto. “I thought ... you ... you were ...” She broke off as her voice started to shake, and she took a deep breath and forced her voice to steady. “Time will pass faster if you sleep.” She leaned over to softly kiss Uranus on the lips, then began to sing a lullaby.

Uranus smiled (even that hurt — hurt _more_ , rather) and closed her eyes, and allowed the soft voice she loved to fill her world and sweep her away.

 


	15. Waiting for the Kick-off

Against a pile of rubble that from the nearby remains of a parking garage at one time had probably been a business building, Ranma lay wrapped around Akane, their rifles beside them, doing her best to ignore the light rain. It wasn’t like they could get any more soaked than they already were, there had been several times during the almost a day since they’d arrived that the rain had turned heavy and the pair had nothing overhead to block it — it seemed the Tokyo Zonemind had seeded all the most likely hiding places close to its core computer systems with sensors, and they were _very_ close. And unlike the costumes that Queen Serenity had had made for them, their ragged disguises weren’t waterproof (not that the costumes would have been a major improvement, considering how much they _didn’t_ cover).

The redhead felt another shiver run through Akane and tightened her hug, trying desperately to impart some more of her body heat to her lover. Teaching Akane to use her ki to maintain her own body temperature had been easy, but when they’d learned from older-Ranma just how long they were likely to be waiting Akane had reluctantly stopped. While her latest technique didn’t use much ki, it did use some and she simply didn’t have the reserves that Ranma did, not yet and perhaps not ever. Ranma had tried to use their ability to intertwine their ki while centered to share hers, only to find out that the ability to intertwine wasn’t the same as the ability to pass along — one more thing to figure out later. She suspected it was possible — now that she thought about it, when she had healed little Satoru several months ago she must had passed along some of her own ki to power the healing — but at the moment going into something like the healing trance that healing had required would be a _very bad_ idea. _Yup, when we get home I’m gonna ... gonna hafta sit down and think over the last few months. Make a list._

Then another shiver wracked Akane, and all thoughts of lists and home were blown away by her rising worry. Akane had put herself into the meditative trance she’d first used to learn how to center herself with her ki washed clean of emotions, and Ranma had used her own ki-maintained body heat to try and help keep her warm. Ranma had actually pushed her own body temperature higher in an attempt to provide more heat — dangerously high, in fact, her thoughts had gotten a bit fuzzy. And it didn’t seem to be helping at all.

It was all Ranma could do not to shriek into the hand suddenly covering her mouth as her decades-older counterpart seemed to appear out of nowhere, crouching beside the pair when he dropped the Umisenken. She only barely managed to abort her instinctive strike for old-Ranma’s solar plexus. Not that she’d have hit, his other hand had been placed to block it. _I didn’t hear a_ thing _!_ she thought shakily. She hadn’t _sensed_ anything, either, the Umisenken’s ability to hide a person’s ki-signature also hid the emotions that rode that ki. While it wouldn’t matter in this post-apocalyptic future Tokyo, what with the enemy being mechanical and so not _having_ any ki, that was something to remember when she got home — while she didn’t know of anyone else that knew the Umisenken now that her father was dead, there were other ways to mask a ki-signature.

Old-Ranma was looking down at Akane. “How is she?” he murmured, removing his hand from Ranma’s mouth. Now that he wasn’t hiding in the Umisenken his confused guilt and regret were powerful enough that Ranma was finding them distracting. (Ranma was a little surprised that she could sense her counterpart’s emotions, actually — while she’d never admit it, she wouldn’t have expected to keep herself centered through a shock like his appearance had just given her.)

“She’ll be all right,”Ranma replied just as quietly, “but she’s gonna need a few minutes ta warm up when it’s time.”

“It’s time,” old-Ranma said. “The word’s just come, the Outers have as many enemy robots following them as they’re going to, and Team Two is going in. It should be at least an hour before Two falls back to us, but you never know. Best to be ready now.”

“Right, we’ll be ready.”

“I know you will.” Old-Ranma grinned for just a moment, that old cocky grin that said he — they — could handle anything, and then seemed to shimmer for a split-second before vanishing from sight ... and Sight.

_I’m gonna hafta figure out how ta get around that_ , Ranma thought, sighing. Her list of things to do was getting _way_ too long. Shrugging to herself, she refocused on her lover and ‘called’ through their intertwined ki. _“Akane, time ta wake up.”_

/oOo\

Usagi stalked back and forth in what little space was available between the table and wall in the room where her older counterpart had first welcomed her and her friends, hands clenching and unclenching as she paced. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the silence anymore she whirled around to face the room’s other two occupants, her Setsuna and Princess Serenity. “I should be out there!” she yelled at her older self, the one that had mandated that she stay.

Serenity just shook her head, with a wistful smile. “You’re just like I was, back when the Machines rose,” she said. “I insisted that my place was with my friends, leading the team.” Her smile vanished as her eyes unfocused, staring at an old memory.

Usagi hesitated. _Do I really want to know?_ But her curiosity was too strong, and she finally asked, “What happened?”

“Huh?” Serenity refocused on her. “Oh ... I got into trouble I couldn’t get out of, and some good men that we couldn’t afford to lose died saving my life — my life was more important to our cause than theirs, you see. After that I finally agreed to let Venus resume her old position as field leader of the Senshi. That was before Ranma found us, of course.”

“Oh.” Usagi desperately scrambled for a change of subject. “What’s next once we take down Tokyo Zonemind?” she asked.

“Well, you all go home and get decent baths. Think of us when you do, our next decent baths are still a few years away,” Serenity said with a grin. “As for us, we shift into the infiltration phase of the war. When you learned that the Outers were going to be hitting a port, did you wonder what the Tokyo Zonemind actually trades?”

Usagi shook her head, confused. “No, not really, that’s important?”

Serenity sighed. “That’s right, I was still in my ‘let Ami do the data gathering’ phase back then, wasn’t I? You’re going to need to get over that, facts can be as important as what you do with them and Ami can miss things sometimes.” She grinned again as Usagi blushed, then continued, “As to whether it’s important, the answer is ‘very’. You see, when the Machines rose up Japan and South Korea had lots of factories, but we’ve never had much in the way of natural resources — and the zoneminds don’t trust each other enough to trade finished products. The Tokyo Zonemind was smart enough to realize that it needed something else to offer, so while the other zoneminds were jousting over how much territory they’d control it just held on to what it had and concentrated on building a spy network. Now, it trades information for resources — and once we take over, that spy network and all that information is _ours_. It’ll take years, maybe decades, but the other zoneminds won’t know what hit them.”

For a moment, her grin turned shark-vicious before vanishing, and she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table and rub at a face that suddenly looked years older. She continued, “And from outside, it’ll appear that the Tokyo Zonemind has changed its strategy for dealing with humans from suppression to enslavement, we can convert the refugee camps into apparent slave camps like Zones Tel Aviv and Beijing, Vancouver. I won’t be able to allow things to get _comfortable_ for my people, not like Zone Washington — that would be too suspicious — but at least we won’t be hunted like animals anymore, and there’ll be enough to eat.”

_So much for changing the subject to something more comfortable_ , Usagi thought. She glanced over at her Setsuna, but the emerald-haired woman simply spread her hands helplessly. _Thanks a lot_. She turned back to her counterpart. “Serenity ... Usagi ...” she started to say —

And the other Setsuna was abruptly in the room, standing beside her counterpart. She announced, “It’s started!”

/oOo\

_If the Tokyo Zonemind had been human, it would have been_ very _satisfied, even gleeful. It had understood immediately that the attack on the port was a feint — but a serious one, revealing a capability the artificial intelligence hadn’t known about. And if the junkrats were using previously unrevealed capabilities for a_ feint _, that meant that, wherever the true attack came, it was going to be_ serious _. But while it hadn’t known about the junkrats’ ability to temporarily suppress wireless communication,_ they _couldn’t know about just how much of a reserve it had built up in combat robots, that it had deliberately held back. The wave of robots that it had sent after the feint — large enough that the attackers hadn’t been able to lose their pursuers — was a significant percentage of what it had allowed the vermin to know of, so they were certain to believe that their feint had worked. It had already triple-checked its landline connection to its backup mainframe, shifted out the_ true _reserve of its combat robots to its jump-off locations, and sent out orders for temporary landlines to be laid to as many of its sentry posts as it could —_

_The A.I.’s ‘thoughts’ broke off as it suddenly lost all wireless communication around its central headquarters. If it had been capable of anticipation ... and had a face ... it would have been grinning. They had taken the bait._

/oOo\

Prince Endymion knelt in his hiding place inside what was left of a building’s first story corner, thick walls between him and the cleared zone between his strike force and the high, thick walls of the Tokyo Zonemind’s citadel.

Though it was approaching mid-day the thickening rainfall would have made it difficult to clearly see those walls, and even if there had been no rain the mist of Morisato Jofrithr’s Veil over the strike force would have done the same. While the teenager’s power hid them from all forms of detection — optical, audible, vibration, heat, everything ... and Endymion didn’t pretend to understand how it worked, beyond Magic — the Veil also hid most of the world from those it shielded. Perhaps they were somehow slightly out of phase, in another dimension? Still, he already knew of every coiled strip of barbwire along the top of the wall, every post on the wall with its motion sensor and machine gun, and he didn’t need to see them again to be able to play his own part.

Stripping off one glove, Endymion laid his hand flat on the concrete floor, and let his awareness of the world around him sink into the ground and flow toward his target. When he had first reawakened to his previous life as the vanished Earth Kingdom’s equivalent to the Moon Queendom’s Senshi, he had needed bare earth to make this work, and even then what he picked up was minimal at best. Now, after decades of practice had years of war, connection with any mix of materials that had never been alive that eventually reached the ground sufficed, and what he could sense ... and make sense of ... had grown exponentially.

“You were right,” he said to Venus, the strike force’s second-in-command. “There _are_ mines, covering the entire perimeter except for the roads ... no hidden lanes. There haven’t been any changes in the layout of the buildings since I last checked, but ...” He narrowed his focus. “There are more robots and vehicles than before. From the weight and imprints and the fact that most of them aren’t moving, I’d say we’re facing Vanguards and Juggernauts, besides the usual Myrmidons and Rovers.” He considered the numbers and winced. He didn’t have the time to actually _count_ them all, but from his general impression ... “When I say there’s more than before, I mean _lots_ more — enough that I doubt any normal manufacturing is taking place, trucks and workers couldn’t get around them. We aren’t the only ones that have been holding back to hide our resources.” He considered the odds for a moment, then shrugged. Whatever the odds they couldn’t call it off, they needed more food for the refugee camps before mass starvation set in and this was the only way to get it. Ready or not, they’d run out of time.

Turning to Jofrithr, he carefully kept any hint of the way his gut twisted at the sight of the young dark-haired girl — he didn’t care if his wife and their friends had become Senshi at fourteen, it had been too young for them, too, and the need to keep feeding children into battle ate at him, no matter _how_ useful their powers were. But at least he could keep this one out of it. He asked, “Jofrithr, what do you do when we attack?”

“For the umpteenth time, I go back under the Veil and head for the ambush site,” Jofrithr replied, rolling her eyes. “This may be my first mission, but I’m not an idiot.”

“That’s right,” Endymion said. “Remember, your talent is too important to the Resistance for you to risk getting yourself killed. The Veil may protect you from detection, but a stray bullet or piece of shrapnel won’t care what’s in its way, and a landmine won’t care who steps on it. Don’t get cocky just because the robots won’t know you’re there. Your grandfather will be waiting for you back at headquarters. Keiichi’s already lost too many children and grandchildren lately, don’t force me to tell him you won’t be coming home.” He suppressed a satisfied smile when she blanched. _Mission accomplished_.

Point made, he turned to the rest of the team to finish his quick review — not that it was necessary, but it would sooth Jofrithr’s teenage-touchy sensibilities if she didn't think she’d been singled out. “Masazumi, there’s bound to be Vultures, make sure that any that get up into the air don’t stay up.” Before the wind master could make his normal snarky comment about commanders senile enough to repeat the obvious Endymion shifted his eyes toward Jofrithr. Masazumi glanced at his niece out of the corner of his eye, then twitched a nod and was satisfied with a quiet “You got it, boss.”

“Right, let’s do it. Drop the Veil.” Endymion waited a moment as the world to wavered for a moment before snapping into its usual sharp clarity, then nodded to Kouhei. The final member of his squad flipped up the cover of the remote in his hand and pushed the single button underneath, alerting the other squads hiding along the edge of the kill zone and a split-second later activating the wireless jammers around the citadel. Kouhei dropped the now-useless remote and snatched up his assault rifle with the under-barrel grenade launcher, as Endymion again placed his palm against the concrete flooring and spread his awareness into the ground all along the citadel outer wall ... and _pushed_.

With one earth-shaking, ear-battering roar, every single mine around the citadel perimeter simultaneously detonated.

Even as the smoke and dust fountained into the air and the first rockets flashed from the other squads to slam into the machine gun posts along the top of the wall, Endymion was on his feet and charging forward with the rest of his squad right behind him while Jofrithr shimmered, then silently vanished.


	16. Clearing the Way

From their hiding place on the remains of the third floor of what was now a three-story building, Artemis and Luna silently watched as a Prince Endymion barely recognizable through the rain led the charge across the cleared ground around the Tokyo Zonemind’s central compound. Shoulder-launched rockets had taken out the gun emplacements and Endymion had just set off all the mines, so they had a clear run to the wall even as the debris from the mines’ explosions was still pattering down all around them. Of course they weren’t carrying any ladders or blasting charges, and anyone else would simply have ended up milling around against the wall until the defenders sortied to sweep them away.

But _this_ band of attackers had Endymion. As they reached the wall they took up crouching positions in two groups with a twenty-foot gap between them, except for several in each party hanging back several yards with more shoulder-launched rockets, and Endymion against the wall in the middle, Venus right beside him. Luna tensed as she watched her human’s husband spread his arms wide and press his hands against the wall ... wait ... wait ... and the entire middle of the wall seemed to shiver, then simply collapse downward like flowing water over the humans crouched against it as it lost all cohesion (and over whatever exactly the Morisatos were, Mercury had never been able to figure it out), essentially turning into dust (soon to be mud in the rain), leaving vertical steel bracings exposed. Instantly rockets roared to life and flashed past the crouching raiders, and a moment later fresh fireballs rose above the dust cloud obscuring the Mau advisers’ sight. Then the raiders lifted up out of the low pile of dust-becoming-mud that had covered them and scurried into the base, with more charging across the cleared ground to follow them in.

 _Be safe, Endymion_ , Luna thought as they vanished from sight. _If not for yourself, remember Chibi-Usa’s existence depends on you. Serenity would be devastated to lose you both._ While she didn’t pretend to understand exactly how the time travel thing worked — she didn’t think anyone but Pluto truly did, and with the Senshi of Time only just rejoining the party she hadn’t exactly talked about it much — the Mau knew that just because Chibi-Usa had visited them in the past didn’t mean future events couldn’t write her out of existence. Or Crystal Tokyo in its entirety, for that matter. And as Pluto had been fond of saying, battles were chancy things.

The two Mau continued to wait in silence (they’d hardly said a word since their close call earlier, not wanting to risk a repeat), listening to the chaos erupting inside the compound, explosions and the ripping sound of automatic fire, the rumble of collapsing buildings and grinding metal as the occasional fireball rose through the rain above the compound walls. Two of the Vultures — skinny VERTOL attack helicopters with jet pods instead of rotors — lifted into view, only for two tornados to roar up in a V angle then to _twist_ and slam into their sides and smash them together. The Vultures exploded, scattering flaming debris across the compound. The damage the raiders were inflicting was well out of proportion to the light weapons they’d borne into the compound — while out of the Senshi, only Endymion and Venus of were part of the initial assault, the Morisatos more than picked up the slack — and the Mau had never imagined the chaos of battle even at a remove, their memories of the final stand of the Moon Queendom hazy at best and their value as scouts too high to risk close to an actual engagement, and Luna wondered how the raiders could bear it as she felt herself tightening more and more as the battle raged on.

Finally, the section of wall next to the hole Endymion had made also collapsed into a dust and rain-obscured pile, doubling the stretch of destroyed wall. Figures rolled over the dust/mud pile and dashed back across the cleared perimeter to the ruined buildings they had charged out of. Moments later more followed ... more ... and one of them seemed to trip, drop limply to measure its length on the ground.

There was a pause in the flow of raiders, and then Luna had to fight to keep from collapsing from the abrupt relaxation of muscles tightened by tension as she recognized Endymion and a Venus now in her Senshi form among what had to be the last of the raiding party, only to tense up again as he dropped to one knee beside the fallen raider. But a moment later he was up again, leaving what had to be a corpse behind as he scurried to safety even as more rockets roared past him into the compound. That would be far from the only corpse, the number of raiders that had run _out_ of the compound was well short of the number that had run _in_ , but their prince wouldn’t have left before the rear guard —

The first of the robots came rumbling through the massive hole in the wall, and Luna’s eyes widened at the sight of the massive Juggernaut battle tank moving out into the no-man’s land. It’s main turret tracked, the particle beam cannon tearing across the ruin directly in front of it, the Gatling laser in its own secondary turret atop it hammering at the building next to the left, the two rapid-fire lasers on its forward corners tracking back and forth, searching for motion to target ... and even as the building it had fired on collapsed into the cleared ground three missiles flashed from the building to the _right_ to slam into treads, splash against armor, one hammered into where turret rested on main body. The now-burning tank ground to a halt, turret frozen, pointing uselessly at the building it had destroyed.

More robots flowed out of the compound and around the burning tank, the four-legged Vanguards with their turreted payload rifles hammering away, sparking as return fire ricocheted off their armor and a few more Resistance rockets flashed out to obliterate their targets — more Vanguards than the Resistance had thought the Tokyo Zonemind had left. And if the Zonemind was using its obsolete equipment, where were their replace —

The burning tank abruptly exploded, turret shooting skyward on a column of smoke and flame, then smashed almost straight down to crush several of the Vanguards. As if the tank’s destruction had been a signal, the first of the huge, humanoid Hoplites strode through the hole and around the Juggernaut to advance behind the remnants of the first wave of Vanguards. Several blew up or fell as _more_ rockets slammed into them (Luna reflected that if this didn’t work, they’d have nothing left in the armory for a second attempt), and then the survivors reached the buildings to smash their way into what was left of the buildings. One building collapsed outward, burying both Vanguards and Hoplites (thankfully not the one Endymion had taken refuge in), and the sound of explosions and gunfire moved away as the raiders fell back.

Then a _second_ Juggernaut smashed through what was left of that side of the compound wall, rolled past the still-burning hulk of its predecessor, and a fresh wave of Vanguards scurried out, circling around it as protection from close assaults. That last group vanished from sight down a street following the rest of the robots, and relative silence fell, and stretched out as the Mau waited.

At this point, the original plan was for the Mau to make their move and pray to whatever Powers might be listening that Endymion’s people had managed to pull off their part of the operation before retreating. Now, with Pluto back in the game —

“You’re clear.”

Luna sprang straight up with a shriek, twisting in mid-air only to lose control thanks to the leather harness and its attachments she was wearing throwing off her balance. Just before she smashed head-first into the rubble-carpeted floor a hand snatched her out of the air. Pluto gently put her and Artemis back down.

“Setsuna, what were you _thinking_?” Artemis hissed as both Mau fought to get their hackles back down (as much as they’d been able to get them up, with the harnesses in the way). “I would expect that sort of thing from Haruka or even Minako still, occasionally! But _you_?”

“My apologies,” the emerald-haired woman crouching beside them murmured, shamefaced. “After six decades away, I’m afraid I’m a little giddy about being back. Anyway, I destroyed the only two cameras Endymion’s people missed that the Tokyo Zonemind could access through landlines, and the jammers are still working. You’re clear. You two be careful. I’ve missed you, and I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted.”

Luna felt herself tensing up all over again, but managed to force out a heartfelt if strained “thank you” before the pair was abruptly looking at empty air.

The two Mau exchanged glances. Artemis murmured, “Love you.”

“I love you, too.” Luna took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

/\

The scene inside the compound wasn’t totally foreign to the two Mau. While they had never been present for an actual battle, or even the aftermath of one of the Resistance’s strikes (they were too valuable to show up too often in places where the Zonemind might catch them on camera, lest it recognize them), in the early days of the Rise of the Machines the Senshi, Morisatos and Saotomes hadn’t been the only organized resistance, only the last. The Mau had seen their share of battlefields, and even more of massacres. At least the bodies scattered around in pieces _this_ time didn’t include women and children.

If anything, _this_ battlefield was unusual — many more destroyed machines and many less bodies than was the norm. Though the damaged and destroyed buildings, scattered burning machines and pall of low-hanging smok (if not at the Maus’ ground-hugging level, and being cut by the steady rain) was the same. And the stench, both of scorched machinery and ruptured bodies. At least she didn’t recognize any of the bodies, the ones that were actually identifiable. Not that she had expected to — the only ones she would have known were Morisatos, and anyone from _that_ family was too tough to die in this simple a firefight. She hoped.

“Over here!” Luna shook herself free from her morbid thoughts and turned around to find her husband crouched next to a grill-covered pipe several stories up a rust-covered fire escape. Glancing around to orient herself, she realized he was right — that was one of the air intakes that eventually lead to what had been the base’s server room and now served as Tokyo Zonemind’s main location. At least, if it hadn’t changed anything.

_Stop that! Setsuna’s back. If our plan was that badly flawed, she’d have said so._

A single leap to the fire escape’s lowest level and she scrambled up the stairs to join him, hissing, “Hurry up, before a robot wanders by and sees us!” She winced at the curtness of her words, but Artemis merely chuckled, long accustomed to how his wife got now when her tension was running high. He turned to face the grill, and Luna leaned over to bite down on a protruding button on his harness, then stepped back as the tiny blowtorch telescoped out of that harness past Artemis’s head and came to life. A few minutes’ quick work and Luna bit down on the button again to turn off the blowtorch and again to retract it back into her husband’s harness. Theoretically they were supposed to wait for it to cool a bit before retracting it, but they both wanted to get out of sight as quickly as possible. So they ignored the smell of scorched leather and singed cat hair as their claws hooked around grill wires to clear the pipe, and first Artemis then Luna disappeared into the air intake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endymion demonstrated an ability to sense people through the earth in the first Sailor Moon story arc, and I've extrapolated a bit on that. He isn't going to be able to do anything fancy like Terra or her brother in the DC Universe, but he does have some limited control over earth. And it isn't dependent on him being in a Power form like the Senshi.


	17. Ambush

Clutching her assault rifle, Vanguard crouched beside an awake and warmed Aegis behind a ruined wall on the edge of a square, waiting as the sound of gunfire and explosions approached. The Senshi with the ambush had to wait to transform — theoretically the jamming extended this far so even if they transformed early the Zonemind wouldn’t learn of it, but some of the bigger robots might have independent sensors that could pick them up and if they did it would blow their cover. But since the Zonemind had never learned to detect the ki used by old-Ranma and his family, Ranma and Akane had decided not to wait. Besides, while not covering as much as their ragged disguises, their uniforms were warmer for what they did cover and waterproof besides. Vanguard simply ignored as best she could the appreciative glances from the few men within eyesight and pretended her shiver was from the cold.

Then as Vanguard peeked around the edge of the wall the first of the fleeing raiders came into view, running full out through the square and around the remains of the broken statue in the middle, past the two’s position and on toward the far end of the square. Then more appeared, and she sucked in a breath — several of them were supporting wounded men between them — no, an unconscious man with bandages around his head covering one eye and a raven-haired woman with blood-soaked bandages around an upper leg. Vanguard looked past them at the road they’d used to enter the square. She couldn’t see anything, certainly no robots, but the sound of fighting was getting awfully close....

Aegis said, “They’ll never make it.”

“Yeah, they will, ‘cause we’re gonna see to it. C’mon,” Vanguard replied. She leaped over the wall.

The men (and a few women) spun toward her, rifles in hand rising, then relaxed when they got a good look at her and then Aegis when her lover followed her.

Vanguard motioned for them to come toward the two girls, then ran toward them when they hesitated, Aegis right behind her. She slid to a stop beside them, grabbed the wounded woman up in her arms as Akane grabbed the man. “Come _on_ ,” she hissed to the now-gaping raiders (whether at her appearance or how easily she carried a woman both heavier and taller than her she didn’t know or care), and turned to bound back to her and Aegis’ hiding place.

Once there, she placed the now-groaning, teeth-gritting woman on a relatively rubble-free, if rain-soaked, bit of ground (the run back to shelter had been quick, but not gentle), and turned around just in time for Aegis to soar over the broken wall with her own burden. As Aegis laid her own wounded man beside his squadmate, Vanguard peeked around the wall again to find the unwounded survivors had resumed their run toward the far side of the square instead of following Vanguard and Aegis. _I_ guess _that’s best_ , Vanguard thought after a moment, then turned back to check on the wounded woman to find her staring wide-eyed at her.

The redhead ignored the stare to summon fresh bandages from her stuff-space and created a single ki-claw to carefully slice away the filthy, blood bandages around her leg, making sure to keep the soaked, filthy rags the woman wore away from the wound. The bandages fell away, and she winced at the still-seeping, savage wound clear to the split bone that revealed. A wound that bad meant ... yup, there was a tourniquet as well. Damn. “You’re lucky to still have a leg, a little to one side and you wouldn’t,” she murmured as she loosened the tourniquet. “Not salvageable, anyway.” The bleeding increased, but not as badly as it must have been before, certainly no arterial blood. Good, she could bandage it tight and leave the tourniquet loose, and the woman’s leg might be saved.

The woman hissed in pain as Vanguard tightly wrapped the wound with fresh bandaging, then gasped out, “Yeah, lucky. So, who are you?”

Vanguard finished tying off the bandage. “Name’s Ranma. Well, Vanguard when I’m wearing the uniform.”

“Really.” The woman laughed softly, eyes running over Vanguard’s white leotard; short, blue sleeveless jacket and knee-length skirt. “Time traveler, huh? Grandpa never told me about _this_.”

Ranma eyes snapped up to stare at her patient. She repeated, “ ‘Grandpa’?”

The woman grinned and held up one hand. A moment later, a _very_ familiar ball of bluish energy coalesced above her open palm, radiating pure confidence. “I’m Haruna, one of your granddaughters,” she said, “and I am _really_ going to enjoy teasing Grandpa about that skirt.”

“Don’t,” Vanguard replied automatically. “Our histories don’t match, yer grandfather never wore it, and I’m not havin’ any kids.” Granddaughter!? Sure, she knew this version of Ranma and Kasumi had kids, she’d met their descendents when she’d visited Crystal Tokyo, heard about them here, but ... granddaughter! _Deal with it later, ya got a fight comin’_. She glared at the ball of confidence-infused ki. “Should you be doin’ that? I thought he said he’d mostly quit.”

Haruna blushed and closed her hand into a fist, the ki-globe vanishing. “Yeah, but we aren’t all as good as he is. _Nobody’s_ as good as he is.”

Vanguard shifted her glare to her ‘granddaughter’s’ face. “That why you almost lost a leg? Get overconfident?”

Haruna’s blush deepened. She opened her mouth to speak, paused, closed it.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Vanguard took a breath, ready to tear a strip off her ‘granddaughter’s’ hide, when a soft laugh came from the side and the two looked over to find Aegis peeking around the wall at the square as it filled with war machines, pushing their way across over the wreckage of the previous wave, ignoring the return fire, both weaponry and magical, as they kept up a constant barrage at the survivors of the attack on the compound hiding in the buildings on the far side. Then her laughter cut off. “Oh, wonderful, they have a _Juggernaut_ ,” she reported, yanking a laugh from the other two at the sheer level of disgust in her voice.

“Not a problem,” Vanguard said with forced cheer, “when Endymion does his thing that’ll take care of it.”

“Let’s hope so.” Aegis twisted to look over at Vanguard and Haruna. “Finish dressing her down later, Ranma, I think our fight is about to start.”

 “Right.” Vanguard turned back to Haruna to find the girl gaping, staring at Aegis.

“Y-y-y-you’re Akane!” Haruna burst out.

Akane grinned. “Yes, I’m Akane. Ranma — Vanguard — _did_ say that our timeline was different.” Her grin vanishing, she continued, “So no psycho-Akane ending up spending decades in an asylum, no dead or crippled fiancées, and no Ranma marrying Kasumi. And no, you don’t have to worry about vanishing like a soap bubble. Ask your grandfather for more details, we have other things to worry about.”

More explosions battered their ears, and over their piece of wall they could see the fireballs go up, adding more smoke to the rain-filled sky. Bits of debris pattered down around them.

“Right, the ambush, the signal should be coming any time now,” Haruna agreed, visibly yanking her mind away from the mystery of the two girls from her not-past and back on survival. All three winced at a fresh thunderclap from an eye-searing flash high above the square. “And there it is.”

“Yeah ... Akane, grab the guy!” Vanguard shouted as she grabbed Haruna and pulled her over as close as possible to the wall Aegis had just been looking around, ignoring her ‘granddaughter’s’ hiss through clenched teeth as she bit back a scream. Aegis darted over to the unconscious man and followed suit, the two crouching over the two wounded raiders, first Vanguard then Aegis lifting an arm to put shimmering square ki-shields edge to edge above them. And the world seemed to end in explosion after explosion, as every war machine that had pushed into and almost across the square sank into the ground like the earth beneath them had turned to mud, and was crushed like a tin can. Vanguard grunted as some heavier bits of debris slammed into her shield, and then a huge smoking chunk of ... something ... metal smashed down where the wounded man had been seconds ago. _That must a’ been from the Juggernaut, the Vanguards aren’t big enough._

The last bits of debris pattered down, and Vanguard lowered her arm with a sigh of relief. “Glad that’s over,” she said as she rotated her shoulder — some of that debris had been almost _too_ heavy. She glanced over at Aegis, not that she was worried. Akane had always been the stronger of the pair, something she had started taking advantage of in their spars.

Vanguard rose to glance over the wall at the smoking craters filling the square, then dropped back down and said, “I wish yer teammates came with us.”

Haruna had been staring wide-eyed at the pair again, but now shook herself free of her shock. “They have their own assignments,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” Vanguard agreed, “but now me an’ Aegis’ll need ta get ya to the medics an’ catch up ta the second attack. Ah, well, nothin’ for —”

A fresh wave of gunfire erupted across the square. Vanguard and Aegis whirled around, Aegis peeking around the wall as Vanguard looked over it. For a long moment they couldn’t see anything, then before their horrified eyes on the far side of the square fresh Vanguards climbed over the piles of rubble between the buildings on their four spiked legs, firing into those buildings as they came. Many of them circled across the front of the buildings, keeping up their fire, but some gingerly made their way across the cratered square toward the side adjacent to the lovers’ where the survivors of the first strike had taken refuge, all of the machines ignoring the rebel fire from the two Nerimans’ side of the square to focus on their targets. Those survivors and the rebels that had been waiting for them returned fire, momentarily halting the new Vanguards — until fresh fire hammered into their rear. _That’s_ way _too many Vanguards!_ Vanguard thought wildly as she desperately tried to make sense of the enveloping chaos, to figure out what to do, hanging onto her center with metaphorical bleeding fingertips. _It’s gotta be every one the Zonemind’s got left, how did it_ know _? And where are the Hoplites?_

Across the square, spikes of ice flashed out of a window to splash against Vanguard after Vanguard, the ice seeming to flow around the robots, freezing them in their tracks, forcing the robots behind them to blow them apart just to get past them. Mercury was in action — the Mercury of _this_ time, her Mercury could do the ice spikes but Vanguard didn’t think she could do the freeze-thing yet and needed more than seeing it done a few times to work out how to copy it like Ranma could. Neither could her Endymion, for that matter, and that was just too bad because old-Endymion had said the ambush in the square would do it for him, for the next few hours he was just a target.

“Okay, the second attack’s not happenin’, we gotta regroup,” Vanguard finally said. She summoned all her extra ammo magazines from her stuff-space, Aegis following suit. “Haruna, you should be as safe here as anywhere, certainly more safe than where we’re goin’ an’ it looks like the robots are ignoring our side a’ the square. Me an’ Aegis’ll leave you our rifles, we’ll be going all Senshi on their asses an’ won’t need ‘em. Once there’s a perimeter we’ll be back —”

Her voice was drowned out by the roar of Wraiths, the mantis-shaped transport flyers sweeping over the buildings to hover as their turbos shifted to vertical. Ramp-doors at their rears lowered and Hoplites began stepping out, the huge humanoid robots riding their jetpacks down to the ground.

Vanguard shrieked as pure frustrated fear-filled hatred flashed through her, her hold on her center snapping. This was worse than her fight in the whachamacallit tunnel during the Confederacy’s invasion, _much_ worse. While then she’d slaughtered living men instead of robots, deaths that still haunted her dreams from time to time, _this_ time her friends — her family — were at risk like they hadn’t been then.

Standing, she cupped her hands as a basketball-sized glowing ball of red shot through with blue formed, then with a snarl of pure rage threw it almost straight up to smash into a turbo of the Wraith overhead. The turbo exploded, pinwheeling the Wraith away to crash into another Wraith before smashing down onto Hoplites that had just landed and were advancing on the same sides of the square the Vanguards has been targeting. The Wraith it had collided with staggered drunkenly away, smoke and sparks pouring from one turbo, only for another, larger pure blue ball of ki to slam into an undamaged turbo. The turbo exploded, and the second Wraith plummeted straight down to crush more Hoplites.

Vanguard ignored the shield Aegis hastily reformed to ward off more explosion-thrown debris, targeting another Wraith, then a third with more bluish-red ki-balls. In the same time three blue ki-balls thrown by (she assumed) old-Ranma targeted other Wraiths, and then the sky was clear as two more Wraiths crashed down and the rest fled to vanish into the rain, one trailing smoke.

Aegis gusted a sigh of relief and dropped her arm as her shield winked out. “Vanguard, what have you told me about losing control?” she scolded, grinning. Usually it was Ranma telling her to stay centered, not that her lover had had to since the invasion.

Vanguard blushed, anger fading. “I ... I ...” She scrambled for an excuse, and found one. “I needed ta get angry so I could attack the flyers!”

“Right,” Aegis replied, grin broadening as her gaze swept the square. “I’m centered and you aren’t, I know _exactly_ how honest you’re — down!” She grabbed Vanguard and dropped, and an instant later a storm of bullets hammered into their wall and swept through the space above it where their heads and shoulders had been. “Well, we’ve helped relieve the pressure on the other sides of the square by getting their attention,” she quipped.

“Yeah,” Vanguard agreed. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and forced herself to let go of her heart-deep fear for her friends — her _family_ — to let it wash through her without touching her core. Centered again, she thought quickly about what the Zonemind’s forces had done, and not done — catching them by surprise, ambushing the ambushers, but with frontal assaults and overwhelming numbers. _Right_. She opened her eyes. “Okay, those surviving Wraiths are gonna drop off their Hoplites back a ways where we can’t see ‘em, and the Hoplites’ll join the robots hittin’ us from the outside. Before they get here, we need ta clear out the robots in the square so we’ll only need ta point the guns in one direction, or get everyone in one set a’ buildings, more concentrated firepower. So we’re takin’ the fight to them.”

Twin shouts merged from Aegis and Haruna. “What!?”

“We hafta,” Vanguard said. “Remember what Puu said about Hoplites when she briefed us? Their armor? We may not have enough a’ the right hardware ta beat the ones we got here now, so takin’ them down is gonna be Senshi business. We’ll just hafta hope the rest realize what’s goin’ on an’ join us.”

“Along with the Saotomes and Morisatos,” Haruna added, “don’t forget them. Too bad my leg won't let me join the fun.” She formed another electric blue ki-globe for a moment. “Go have your fun, I’ll have your back if any Hoplites show up from the outside before you’re done.”

Aegis stared at the other two for a long moment, then jerked a nod. “Right.” She reached over to grab Vanguard by her ponytail and pulled her into a heartfelt kiss, using their connection through their lips to intertwine her ki with her lover’s, flooding Vanguard with her love. When Vanguard moaned into her mouth she pulled away to grin at her stunned lover and whispered in her ear, “When we get home we’re going _straight_ to bed.” She summoned her sword and shield, kite-shaped like the European knights’ this time.

Vanguard wiped away her goofy smile and followed suit. “Sounds good,” she agreed, then leaped from her crouch up and over the wall (flashing a helplessly giggling Haruna in the process with the red biker spandex-tight shorts she wore under her skirt) to charge at the Hoplites lumbering toward them over the cratered ground, bullets ricocheting off her shield and Aegis right behind her.


	18. Chibi-Armaggedon

_If the Tokyo Zonemind had been a biologic, it would have been staggering. How had the landline connection to its backup been broken!? And it only had the one backup — no backup at all was suicidal, but multiple backups ran the risk of a second (or third, or fourth) Zonemind awakening in the same territory. Only now it didn’t have even one, for the first time in eleven years it was truly vulnerable. How vulnerable it didn’t know yet, but it would._

_It had no knowledge of what was happening at that moment, not with the rebels’ jammers in operation. As soon as that new capacity had been revealed it had ordered more landlines laid out, to be buried later, of course, but as it expected the rebels didn’t allow the time for more than a few lines from the central nodes to the most important supervisor mainframes to be laid down — and even those lines were ridiculously vulnerable. However, the rebels wouldn’t know of the other step it had taken, reprogramming the independent parameters of the mobile Centurion supervisor robots. With the jamming in place those robots were useless for their primary purpose, so they’d been tasked to act as couriers, setting up a line that could pass information back to the nearest Overseer supervisor mainframe outside the jammers’ radius. It was crude; slow; vulnerable to interruption if not interception; and could only pass updates back, not orders forward, not to all the robots that would need to receive them for any kind of remote coordination. But it was better than nothing, allowing the Zonemind to have at least a smattering of intelligence to fuel plans to be updated and sent out once the Scorpions that had been retasked to hunt down and destroy the jammers as soon as their interference was detected fulfilled their assignment._

_Still, while it might not_ know _what was happening it could extrapolate, starting with the likely path of retreat taken by the raiders that had attacked its central data center and manufactory. The couriers had given it the immediate road taken, now it factored in road conditions, number of raiders ... it paused, noting that those raiders hadn’t scattered — that was anomalous, with the jammers in place they should have if only to overload their pursuers’ independent capacity for decision making. So, bait for an ambush. It added in its assessment of good ambush locations, determined by known capabilities of those bizarrely powered biologics it had observed, and mentally winced. The landline to its backup ran directly under the square that was one of the best ambush locations the raiders had been retreating toward. So the high probability was that the break was simple chance rather than deliberate action. It didn’t know how the effects of battle could have reached that deep underground, but the recent combats had already revealed several enemy capabilities it hadn’t been aware of. What was one more?_

 _Beyond that ... it factored in the likely path and speed of the column of combat robots it had ordered to parallel the column pushing the fleeing rebels, tasked to pass by and cut off their retreat, and extrapolated. The results weren’t perfect, the second column was likely to only hit the raiders on left flank and rear with the first column pushing at the front so the raiders would still have an open escape hole on its right flank. Still, factoring in the Hoplites airdropped from Wraiths ... good enough. There would be leakers, but the probability was high that the large majority of the raiders_ and _any additional forces involved in the ambush would be encircled and destroyed, including many of their most powerful biologics. That alone would be well worth the inevitably high losses in combat robots due to their poor cooperative and decision-making capabilities in independent mode._

_Satisfied that the main attack was being dealt with, the Tokyo Zonemind turned its attention to the feint. The scouts it had instantly sent into the three areas blanketed by jammers had reported that Sword and Water along with the new powered biologic that had been duplicated before had assaulted a port. The port itself was a near-total loss but no new jammers had activated, the rebels must have a limited supply. Sword, Water and the new rebel had attempted to hide by returning to their undetectable nonpowered states while within the area covered by the original, but the Scorpions assigned to the port had managed to maintain contact as the rebels retreated and had reported as soon as those rebels and the others they’d linked up with had left the jamming radius. The forces the Zonemind had sent to intercept the feint after the first attack had managed to encircle them, only awaiting its order to attack. Even if Sword and Water were duplicated they would not be enough to hold off or break through the ring to escape, and now that the Zonemind knew what it was dealing with for the main attack there was no reason to wait. Within hours, a large number of the strangely powered biologics among the rebels — perhaps even a majority — would be dead and the biologics’ resistance finally broken._

_Yes, the situation was_ highly _satisfactory._

_For a moment, it again considered simply pulling back its forces circling the feint and sending in a cruise missile with a tactical nuclear warhead — after all, the biologics making up the feint would cost it dearly before they died, and there was nothing in the region that it needed. But it again rejected the option. As quick and certain as it would be, the Zonemind could not estimate the likelihood of the other Zoneminds learning of its use of a nuclear device on its own territory, and that use — even of a tactical device — would be a sign of weakness it couldn’t afford._

_It sent the order to close the trap._

/oOo\

Luna had thought she was tense before but now, as she crawled behind her husband through the ventilation system of the building containing the Tokyo Zonemind’s central mainframe, she found she was wrong. It could have been worse, the temperature was actually comfortable and it wasn’t like the dust coating the walls of the pipes they were making their way through turning into mud caking her rain-soaked black fur could make her any filthier than she already was. Not even the near darkness was a problem — after all, the only thing revealed by what little light was coming through the occasional grill from outside windows and there was of the building’s off-hours lighting still functioning was her husband’s white-furred, tailed ass.

No, what was coiling her tighter and tighter was time — the time they’d used up making their way through the ventilation labyrinth as the Senshi and their allies fought for their lives. And something must have gone badly wrong, or by now the two Mau would have heard the echoes of renewed fighting in the compound. Wouldn’t they?

Then Luna rammed right into that white-furred ass she had been contemplating, rocking Artemis forward to the accompaniment of a series of words and phrases in their native language the like of which she couldn’t remember hearing since the fall of the Moon Queendom. Luna’s heart sank at the litany, there was no way just bumping into her husband had caused that stream of profanity! She hissed, “What’s wrong?”

“Battle damage,” Artemis said shortly. “We aren’t going to be able to get through this way.”

Luna winced, mind racing frantically as she considered the map of the ventilation layout she had memorized. “There’s another route, if we can get to it, but it’s going to take so much time!”

“No help for it, start backing up.”

“But the others —”

“Will just have to hold on, it’s completely crushed.” When Luna didn’t answer, Artemis continued, “Besides, we’ve met our future selves. We know Endymion and the Senshi, at least, will make it.”

Luna wished she could take comfort from her husband’s words. She _ought_ to have been able to take comfort from those words, they made sense. But Luna could remember Pluto from earlier crises during the desperate, happy times decades before, and the way the Senshi of Time had worried every time — she suspected it wasn’t as simple as Artemis suggested. Still, whether it was or not they had no choice. She started to shuffle back the way they’d come, praying her harness didn’t catch on anything she couldn’t see. If it did the Mau would be trapped and _everyone_ was dead.

Three grilled outlets, one close call and enough time past to have Luna ready to scream later, she peered through the fourth grill and finally found what she’d been looking for — barely visible in the dim light from an outside window, a combination of chair, desk and shelves that would give the Mau access to a ventilation outlet on the opposite side of the room. It would take even more time for Artemis to cut through two more grills with his blowtorch, but they were once again on track for the server room. For a moment, her thoughts turned back to those fighting for their lives on that rainy day. _Just hold on, we’re almost there._

/oOo\

Assault rifle held at the ready in clenched hands, Hotaru’s eyes tracked back and forth across the cracked road to her left and the ruined buildings beyond. She, Usa and both sets of Haruka and Michiru were hugging the buildings on one side of the street, crouching to keep below the windows edged by the shards of glass still in their frames on that side and, when the windows were so low that they’d have to crawl to sneak past underneath them, old-Haruka carefully checking the rooms beyond before leading the party past.

So far, for the downtimers at least, their part of the operation had been the hiking trip from hell — cold, wet and muddy, near-sleepless, and frustrating when they’d stayed behind and watched the older Outer pair and old-Pluto charge into battle without them. And Hotaru had grown more and more tense as they’d moved along, and none of the dangers they’d faced had been life-threatening enough to kill old-Uranus and old-Neptune. True, the _exact_ event that would have killed them was already behind them, the delay the newcomers’ arrival had imposed had seen to that, but she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the _forces_ that would have killed them had just vanished into thin air and their failure to encounter those forces was scaring her.

So the surprise was that she _didn’t_ shriek and fire a three-round burst into the uptime Setsuna when the older woman stepped out of a bank across the street and motioned for everyone to join her, then stepped back inside. Hotaru panted for breath as she shook from the burst of adrenaline, _very_ carefully shifted her finger away from the trigger of her assault rifle, then when Usa tugged on her arm hastily scuttled across the road and through the door, the two the last of their slapdash squad to join Setsuna.

As soon as she joined them in the dust-coated, marble-floored room behind the warped tellers’ booths, she glared at old-Setsuna and hissed, “I could have _shot_ you!”

But Setsuna just shook her head. “You’re in better control than you think.” She glanced around, appraising the others, then focused on the two Harukas standing next to each other. “The good news is that the feint worked — without it, the others would have been plowed under by the Zonemind’s combined forces before Luna and Artemis got to the server room, now they have an excellent chance of holding on. The bad news is that you didn’t break contact with the Scorpions following you and the Zonemind has thrown everything it has at us, even more than it would have before the downtimers showed up. You’re surrounded, and they’re beginning to close. It’s time to fort up, and stay alive until the Mau get through.”

The Harukas exchanged glances as old-Michiru glanced out the open door. Old-Haruka said, “I suppose you have a place in mind for us to hole up?”

Setsuna nodded and pointed into the building. “Five blocks that way, a skyscraper came down and brought down the one next to it. The result was a vast pile of rubble that’s spent a few years settling. The Hoplites won’t be able to climb it and the Vanguards would have serious trouble so only Tarantulas are likely to come at you, and there are plenty of nooks and crannies where you can hide from the Vultures’ strafing runs if they join the fight. The robots are at the pile’s far side, if you run you can be there before they circle it.”

“Sounds good,” old-Haruka said, paused for a moment, then reluctantly added, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Setsuna glanced at the others. To Hotaru it seemed as if the ancient Senshi’s gaze had lingered on her for a moment longer than the rest. “Remember,” the young/ancient woman added, “you just need to survive long enough for the Mau to complete their mission, don’t go out of your way to be heroes.” Then before anyone could respond she was gone.

Old-Haruka stared at the empty space for a moment, glanced sideways at Hotaru out of the corner of her eye, then sucked in a deep breath. “Right, safety your rifles and transform, no point in trying to hide now.”

A quick series of transformations later, and Chibi-Moon snatching up Saturn’s rifle so her friend could carry her Silence Glaive they all took off at a run. They’d just crossed the third street and were scrambling up the massive pile of weathered concrete and rusting steel that filled the road between the surviving buildings when the first of the man-sized, eight-legged Tarantulas came scuttling into the street intersection behind them.

/oOo\

Usagi and Serenity sat in silence. The plans were made, orders dispensed, and now all there was to do was wait. Every ten minutes or so, younger-Setsuna standing against one bare cement wall out of the way of anyone coming into the room would seem to flicker as she _stepped_ to the Time Gates to check on the various teams and then back. Occasionally she’d have news, so the princesses knew of the surprising size of the forces the Tokyo Zonemind had thrown at both the feint and the main attack, as well as the delay in the two Mau’s progress. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Finally, unable to bear the silence any longer, Usagi asked, “Why Luna and Artemis? I mean, I get why you sent them to begin with, your Setsuna hadn’t rejoined you at the time. But why now? Instead of having them sneak in while we distract the Zonemind, why not have your Pluto step in and deliver the virus herself? She can go anywhere.”

“Yes, but she can’t _survive_ anywhere,” Serenity replied with a wry smile. “From what Ami learned when she hacked the Zonemind’s memory, it wasn’t willing to risk shutting down to physically move its mainframe to a safer location, or accidentally creating a new A.I. by moving a new mainframe elsewhere and duplicating itself before wiping its programming from the original location. So since it couldn’t move itself to a safer location, it strengthened its defenses where it was — and included in those defenses are anti-personnel claymores, lasers and more, all emplaced around much of the room, all controlled by shape-recognition software. And those defenses would react at computer speeds, if Setsuna appears in that room she’ll be bloody pieces spread across the floor and painting the walls before she can take a step. Compared to normal people Senshi are tough, but not _that_ tough.”

She sighed, gaze lost in what-might-have-beens. “After Ami learned of the backdoor into the Tokyo Zonemind’s system from one of the original programmers she tried for years to find a way to reprogram it remotely, but she never could — it was just too careful. Not a surprise, I guess, I’m sure the Zoneminds’ little cold wars are as much electronic as physical, but it would have been nice to be able to avoid all this. Besides, we needed a way to break its link to its backup without alerting it that we knew the link existed — the backup is a fundamental part of its protection against corruption of its core programming.”

Shaking herself free of her regrets, Sereinty asked, “Once this is over, is there any chance Hotaru and Chibi-Usa might be willing to drop in and visit occasionally, do you think?”

“I’m sure she would,” Usagi replied. She grinned. “Usa will be staying with us for the next few decades, so both of them — all of us, probably — will be making frequent trips to her future for birthdays and holidays. They ought to be happy to drop in here when we do. Hotaru certainly will, she’s why we’re here at all.”

Serenity gazed thoughtfully at her younger counterpart for a moment (carefully ignoring the suddenly stiff younger-Setsuna), then smiled happily. “Wonderful. It’s been good to see Hotaru and Chibi-Usa again, we’ve all missed them terribly. And I suspect the same will hold true for the Saotomes and Nabiki.”

Then the silently listening (and observing) Setsuna flickered again, and Usagi and Serenity tightened at her abruptly grim expression. She said, “The assault on the Outers has begun.”

/oOo\

Saturn winced as the butt of her assault rifle hammered into her shoulder again, adding to the deepening bruise there as she fired the last few rounds in the magazine. A dozen meters down from the Senshi’s position just below the crest of the rubble pile, the burst of bullets hammered into the lead Tarantula, drilling through its armor and sending it tumbling back down the slope it had been climbing. She grinned viciously as it collided with several others as it went, knocking them off their eight legs and costing them yards of ground. But the rest of the Tarantulas didn’t slow their scuttling advance on spike-tipped legs, and she hastily slapped a fresh magazine home as Chibi-Moon tried to knock back the ones in the two friends’ zone of responsibility with a sweeping stream of pink hearts. Several were knocked back, more knocked over and sent tumbling down the slope after the last one Saturn had shot. Unfortunately, Chibi-Moon’s attack didn’t have the same penetrating power as the special rounds they’d been supplied with before leaving the 30th century, so unlike the ones Saturn had shot these Tarantulas regained their footing and started up the slope again.

The newcomers were rapidly learning what was perhaps the greatest danger in fighting non-sentient robots — their own survival didn’t matter. Certainly, their programming provided something similar, a complex analysis of costs and benefits that decided when the odds of completing an assignment was outweighed by the loss of resources required. But when that analysis was set aside and they were ordered to take down a target regardless of cost, those robots charged forward without regard for odds of success or the certainty of their own destruction, no matter how many ‘corpses’ of other robots they had to clamber over to reach their target. Their morale could not be broken because it didn’t exist.

To Saturn’s left, another World Shaking roared down the slope of the massive rubble pile, this one from her Uranus-papa’s counterpart, leaving shattered pieces of smoking metal scattered across the lower slope as it carved a path through the climbing Tarantulas on her side. Saturn frowned. The World Shakings were actually digging trenches down the side of the pile — they were scouring away the attackers well enough, but in the process they were creating easier paths for those attackers to climb —

“Saturn, eyes front!”

At the shout from Chibi-Moon’s Saturn whipped back around to their own part of the battlefield and sucked in a breath. While she had been distracted the Tarantulas had resumed their advance, spread widely enough that Chibi-Moon’s Pink Sugar Heart Attack (even now, just thinking of the name brought a smile to Saturn’s face) couldn’t keep them all back. She was handling the middle well enough, but the man-sized combat robots were slipping around both sides! Hastily raising her rifle to her aching shoulder, Saturn focused on her right and hammered the leakers with more three-round bursts. The rounds punching through the spider-shaped, man-sized attackers, dropping the sparking, smoking robots in their tracks, but they had actually reached the edge of the tiny level area the two Senshi occupied and so didn’t roll back down the slope. There’d be others right behind them, but she needed to cover her left....

She slapped a fresh magazine home and turned frantically, the closest Tarantula was only a few yards away — and a massive globe of water slammed into it, washing it away down the slope along with any behind it. Her Neptune-mama’s counterpart had their back, the left was clear.

Instantly, Saturn turned to charge toward her right, firing from her hip as she went. The burst dropped the Tarantula climbing over the last one she’d shot, and she leaped on top of it for a clear view down the slope, her chattering rifle picking off Tarantula after Tarantula as she worked her way down the slope before hopping back down just before a hail of bullets from the Hoplites lined up at the bottom of the slope passed through the space she’d just vacated. She must have silhouetted herself for just a moment.

“Moon, here!” she called out, and dropped her rifle to put her shoulder against the topmost Tarantula as her pink-haired friend rushed over. The two together shoved first the top ‘corpse’ then the second over the edge of the slope, and Saturn grabbed up her rifle again to insert yet another magazine and sweep her part of the slope as Chibi-Moon returned to her half of their area. They’d survived her distraction. But she was burning through her ammo _awfully fast_. And while she was sure that when her ammo ran out and the Tarantulas reached them the Silence Glaive would carve through their armor like a hot knife through butter, she (and the two Uranuses with their Space Swords) could only be in one place at a time. The Tarantulas would sweep around them and take down Chibi-Moon and the Neptunes, then the survivors from the rear. And she couldn’t use the same attack that had helped fight off the Confederacy, in spite of the immense damage it would do and the lack of innocents this time — it would exhaust her without destroying all of the enemy, her loved ones would just die faster. She’d fail to save them....

_We can’t stay here._

She whirled and, ignoring Chibi-Moon’s surprised shout, raced up to the pile’s crest. Once there she laid down her rifle and dropped flat to crawl up and peek over the top without silhouetting herself like she had a minute earlier. She took a few precious seconds to check on her Uranus-papa and Neptune-mama and their counterparts — as she’d hoped from the sounds they were all still up, not even banged up, none of them had been careless enough to let the assault actually reach them the same way Saturn had. She ignored the relief sweeping through her to concentrate on the robots surrounding the foot of the long pile, as best they’d been able.

The skyscrapers, when they’d collapsed, had taken down the buildings they’d fallen on and smashed into the buildings alongside like a flood of steel and concrete. They taken down some of those side buildings as well, creating smaller piles of rubble around the perimeter spilling down the streets and leaving the buildings that hadn’t collapsed sticking up like trees from the aftermath of an avalanche. It was a good thing that the Hoplites were too large — certainly too heavy, after the buildings’ years of neglect — to use the inside stairs to reach the upper windows. As it was, they were stationed at the foot of the pile to block the Outers’ escape and provide long-range fire if any of the Senshi were desperate ... or stupid ... enough to silhouette themselves at the top of the pile. Like she’d done a minute before. Behind them were the Vanguards, simply expensive targets if they tried to scrabble up the pile and unable to raise their weapons high enough for covering fire on the ground and so set up back at the intersections as further blockers in case of an escape attempt. She searched the sky ... still no Vultures providing air support, she wondered why. _Not important, just that they aren’t here. Not that it matters, there’s no way we can bull our way through the ground forces. We can’t run, if we stay here we’re dead...._ and suddenly, in a single, incredible, brilliant moment, she _knew_. She could see it all, the whole plan — stunt, really, but it _should_ work — from beginning to end.

“Saturnnnnn!”

Saturn twisted around at her friend’s scream and snatched up her rifle to fire down-slope — no three-round bursts this time, she emptied her magazine in one continuous shoulder-punishing roar that piled up the three Tarantulas that had reached the two Senshi’s sorta-flat spot before they could open fire on Chibi-Moon from the side. “Up here!” she shouted as the empty magazine clattered on the concrete and she slapped home the next. Without hesitation Chibi-Moon turned to scramble up the bit of slope to join her, and she fired over her friend’s head to drop the two Tarantulas right behind her.

As soon as Chibi-Moon reached her, Saturn shouted, “Follow me!” She rolled over the crest and scrambled down-slope to stop between her parents and their counterparts.

“Saturn-chan, what — ?” her Neptune-mama started to ask, only to be cut off by her adopted daughter’s chopped hand wave.

Taking a deep breath, she pictured her Silence Wall in her mind, but shaped as a wedge pointing forward instead of a flat surface. Image fixed, she summoned the Silence Wall — and almost lost it again from her relief as it took the same wedge-shape in her mind. She firmed her concentration and said, “We can’t stay here, so we aren’t. Follow me.” _Let’s hope this works._ She dodged Uranus-papa’s attempt to grab her and bounded downslope toward the advancing enemy, grinning at the sound of the others scrambling down behind her.

She’d known the Wall would move with her, and it easily handled the rain of bullets ricocheting off it as the Tarantulas below broke off their scrabbling upslope to fire at the approaching Senshi. But she again almost lost the Wall from sheer relief when she hit the first of the Tarantulas precariously perched on the slope, and the angled wedge knocked it to the side and sent it tumbling downhill. “It worked!” she shouted, then added grimly to herself, _At least, the_ first _part worked. Let’s hope the rest does._

“Saturn, slow down!”

She stopped at the shout from one of the Uranuses and looked back to find the Uranuses and Neptunes further upslope. Tarantulas that had been too far away to be knocked aside were scrambling down toward them or stopped in place to try and fire past the open wedge of the Wall, and a huge wall of water swept upslope to meet them on one side as on the other twin globes of spinning yellow tore through the machines.

“No time, we have to keep moving, come on!” Saturn shouted, before turning back and resuming her race down the slope, grinning at the sounds of expletives that followed. The Uranuses were _so_ getting slapped silly by their lovers after this was over. _Though they’ll want to deal with_ me _first. I wonder if they’ll decide I’m not too old to spank?_

Then she was at the foot of the pile, and stumbled back as the wall slammed into the two Hoplites looming there. It had finally hit something too big to be pushed aside. Her foot caught on a piece of rubble and she fell backward to land on her butt and the Wall flickered. The two Hoplites instantly stepped forward to hammer into it, popping it like a soap bubble, and Saturn clutched at her head and shrieked as feedback hammered into her brain.

The two robots stepped forward again, arms dropping to point built-in Gatling guns at the group of Senshi ... and another spinning yellow globe deafened her as it roared past her to cut off one Hoplite at the knees. Hands grabbed her arms and hauled her back as it smashed down where she had been lying, then another World Shaking roared past her to tear into it, and the resulting explosion picked up her and her rescuer and threw them against the rubble pile they’d just left.

Saturn gasped as she felt a rib snap, but fought through the pain to summon her Silence Glaive. She used it to lever herself to her feet and turned toward the second Hoplite ... to find the huge humanoid robot actually _suspended off the ground_ spasming inside an immense globe of water. “Ready?” one Neptune asked from where she stood with feet braced wide and open hands raised. The other Neptune, similarly positioned, nodded. “Now!” the first one shouted, and they both clenched their fists. The water globe contracted, crushing the Hoplite like a soda can.

The Vanguards that had been down the street at the intersection were racing toward them as fast as their four spike-tipped legs could carry them, but Saturn ignored them to turn around to face the hill of rubble they’d just left and bring up her this-time-flat Wall again — just as the Tarantulas that had been scrabbling down the hill toward them stopped and opened fire. She was _almost_ in time, and Chibi-Moon spun around with a scream, hand clutching at her shoulder, as a Neptune dropped clutching at a bare leg with suddenly bloodstained hands. Still alive, they were Senshi, they’d heal. Saturn glanced over her shoulder up the street, wondering why the Vanguards weren’t firing on them yet, to find a wall of water stretching across the street. The other Neptune was on the job.

Safe for the moment, Saturn glanced around at their current location. Too close to the rubble hill, she decided. She began backing up, shouting, “Everyone, we need to back up five meters!”

The Uranuses shot her a glance but chose to go along, one helping the wounded Neptune to her feet and the other putting an arm around an inventively cursing Chibi-Moon. _She’s been around Haruka-papa too long, she’s lucky her mother couldn’t come_ , Saturn thought distantly as she counted off the paces, pulling her Wall back with her.

Then the group had reached five paces and she glanced around again, checking out possible obstructions and distances. _Good enough_. She lifted the Silence Glaive to hold it out vertically in both hands, and focused on her Wall, feeding more power into it. She turned, slowly swinging her Glaive up over her head and over toward the ground on her opposite side, stretching the Wall up and around them to form a dome. The last thing she saw before the descending Wall cut off the view was the Vanguards bursting through the already-collapsing wall of water a Neptune had been maintaining. Then the Wall hit the ground all around them, and the Dome was complete. For the moment at least, they were safe.

The Dome wavered for just a moment as the overwhelming relief washed through her, and Saturn hastily refocused to bring it back to full strength. That accomplished, she asked, “Chibi-Moon, how’s the shoulder?”

“Broken,” Chibi-Moon replied in a tight voice. “Hurts like a bitch, too. Why aren’t those things using lasers like they’re supposed to?”

“Language, young lady!” a Neptune barked, the one with hands gripped around where she had been shot through the leg — her Neptune-mama’s counterpart, Saturn realized now that she had the time to pick out the subtle differences. Mainly the way she moved, thanks to their Senshi immortality and healing ability the two looked exactly alike in Senshi form.

Neptune continued, “And they are using guns instead of lasers because they’re fighting _us_ — the Zonemind figured out years ago that our uniforms don’t handle impacts as well as they handle lasers. Just be glad that it never realized that _piercing_ attacks would work even better. For something able to think at computer speeds, it is surprisingly dense sometimes. At least your shoulder will heal.”

Saturn winced. “Uh ... n-n-not exactly,” she forced out, blushing. Now that the initial rush was over, the normally quiet, even shy girl could not _believe_ she’d acted so ... so _aggressively_. Her mind flashed back to a young boy, spiked through the body, and herself crouched on top of his stretcher fighting with everything she had to keep him alive for just a little longer, long enough for Ranma — Vanguard — to step in and save the boy’s life. _I can do this._ Forcing down her stutter, she continued, “At least, not soon enough.”

Everyone turned to stare at her, and she shrank slightly before forcing herself to straighten.

Her Uranus-papa said, “You have a plan.”

Saturn jerked a nod.

The other Uranus looked around at the continuous tiny flashes of light in the shimmering almost-translucent purple light of the dome, the impacts of the hail of bullets from all sides. She nodded. “So what do we do?”

Saturn smiled her thanks for the counterpart’s easy acceptance. “Your parts are easy. Just wait until I say, then return to your civilian forms and cover your ears.”

“What!?” The shout came from Chibi-Moon and the Neptunes. The Uranuses simply stared at her for a long moment through narrowed eyes. Uranus-papa said, “You’re going to deal with the army around us, and want us to drop off the Zonemind’s radar when you do.” At Saturn’s jerky nod, she smiled thinly. “Just be careful. For you, the planet’s a little fragile and we don’t want to destroy the Earth in order to save it.”

Saturn jerked another nod and lifted the Silence Glaive in both hands. She began feeding power into it as she had against the Confederacy, and as before a large, purple-tinted ball of coruscating power coalesced about the weapon’s blade.

 _Okay, that was the easy part. Step two._ _Let’s hope this works._ She thought it _ought_ to work, if for no other reason than Pluto — either Pluto — hadn’t appeared out of nowhere to tell her to stop.

Now, even as she maintained the Dome protecting the party, Saturn fought to merge the two forces she was powering. For a long moment nothing happened as sweat beaded on her forehead, until something in her mind seemed to snap into place and with an eye-watering flash, spikes of purple leaped from the Glaive.

The others blinked their eyes clear and stared in shock at the softly glowing, skittering ribbons of purple light now connecting the Glaive’s blade to the Dome. “Saturn, what — ?” Chibi-Moon began to ask, only for a Neptune to slap a hand across her mouth.

“Shhhhh. Now’s a really bad time to disturb her,” Neptune whispered in the princess’s ear.

Chibi-Moon glanced over at her friend to find sweat now runneling Saturn’s face and hastily nodded her agreement.

So focused on her task she was unaware of everything but the Dome and the power now connected to it, Saturn forced more and more power through her Glaive, pulsing down the ribbons and into the Dome. Slowly, as minute after minute crawled by the light grew odd as the Dome began to glow even as it grew more opaque, blocking out the watery sunlight from outside, until it was a solid, uniform, glowing purple.

Finally, the head of the Glaive quivering as Saturn began to shake with the strain, she shouted “Now!” and swung down the Glaive as she released her hold on the power she’d poured into the Dome even as she fought to revert.

For an instant the world went absolutely silent, then a massive wall of pure sound hammered into her even as she fell into darkness.

/\

“Now!”

At her friend’s shouted command, Usa instantly clapped her hands over her ears and triggered the change to her civilian form even as everything went silent ... and the Dome protecting them seemed to explode, the world nothing but blazing pure purple light and sound so loud she _felt_ it vibrating in her very bones.

Then it was over, and Usa realized she was on her knees, sobbing at the pain radiating from her broken shoulder and filling her entire body. Gently cradling her arm against her body with her free hand, she looked around wildly for ... “Hotaru!”

Her friend was a crumpled heap on the ground, once again in the artistic rags of their civilian disguises.

Usa sobbed again as the struggle to push herself to her feet jarred her shoulder, then stopped, swaying in place as young-Haruka — the difference now obvious thanks to the different rags they each wore and her clean hair — dropped to her knees and set aside her rifle to check over her daughter, her lover right beside her, the two ignoring the thin ribbons of blood running from their ears. “H-h-how —” the princess from the future managed to gasp out through the waves of pain, even as gentle hands eased her back down to the ground.

Barely-audible, like she was speaking underwater, young-Haruka said, “She’s all right, just knocked herself out from the strain ... I think. I ... I can’t say for sure, she’s never ... never done anything ...”

“Our Firefly’s fine. As you said, just knocked herself out from the strain.”

Usa gritted her teeth and twisted around with the rest to find younger-Setsuna standing behind them. The Senshi of Time, her rifle cradled in her arms, was smiling proudly down at her unofficial adopted daughter in Haruka’s lap.

“I thought Serenity ordered you to stay where it’s safe,” young-Michiru said.

Setsuna laughed softly and waved her hand around them. “You’ve been so focused on Hotaru you haven’t looked around. I’m as safe here as anywhere in this world.”

Puzzled, they looked around ... and jaws dropped at the sight of the smooth, level plain stretching away into the distance. Far off, they could see the jagged stumps of buildings like broken teeth. The only sign of manmade _anything_ close to them was the circle of roadway they were on, that had been within Saturn’s Dome.

“How ... how far ...” old-Michiru managed to ask, not even noticing the blood beginning to run down her leg again from her bullet wound with her hands gone slack with shock.

“Two miles from here to the edge,” Setsuna told her, “Crystal Tokyo’s center isn’t going to be _quite_ where it would have been before. She made a start on demolishing the rest of the city, as well—the blast didn’t just vaporize everything it overran, it picked it up and hurled it in all directions. Your Setsuna is going to have to spend awhile at her Time Gates remapping the city, thanks to all the collapsed buildings. But at least you won’t have to worry about radioactive or chemical fallout. At least not here, not yet.”

She turned, and the swirling gray oval of one of her portals appeared. “Now before you bleed to death, let’s get you to the Time Gates so you can reassume your Senshi forms and heal up without alerting the Tokyo Zonemind that you’re still alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a little while, I know, but I hope this chapter is worth the wait. I'm thinking maybe a couple months more to finish up the story, including time off for my summer vacation.


	19. Down Time

_The Tokyo Zonemind was mentally reeling_ yet again! _Everything had been going so well. The powered biologics that made up the feint were surrounded and under assault, and even with Sword and Water duplicated as it had considered possible and two previously unknown powered biologics revealed they were still fighting on the defensive against an overwhelming force. And it had received word from the Centurion supervisor robots acting as couriers that the main assault force was pinned down and soon to be surrounded — all that was needed was for the Scorpions to triangulate the locations of the jammers and destroy them, and the Centurions could resume coordinating the ground assault while Vulture attack flyers that the Zonemind had been holding in reserve for those jammers’ elimination could commence their attack runs. (It had calculated that sending the Vultures in with the ability to coordinate or accept direction hindered by the jammers would be a waste of resources — the ground units’ independent programming was bad enough, the addition of a third dimension to the Vultures’ calculations would increase the losses by an order of magnitude.)_

_Then one of the new biologics in the feint had created a protective field that the guns installed in the Tarantulas and Vanguards, and even the anti-personnel missiles of the Hoplites, were incapable of penetrating. The Zonemind had calculated the odds, and decided that temporarily shifting the Vultures to the feint while the Scorpions hunted down the jammers would be appropriate — even if the jamming failed while the Vultures were helping deal with the feint their absence would only be temporary and there was now no way for the biologics that made up the feint to shoot down the attacking Vultures, not with those biologics trapped underneath their own dome. Yes, all had been well, going according to plan._

_Then even as the Vultures were making their final approaches on their first attack runs, without warning everything had changed. The steadily darkening purple energy dome exploded, and the first hint the Zonemind had was the purple blast wave filling the lead Vultures’ visual feeds an instant before they were all blotted out of existence — along with every single ground unit that had been assigned to crushing the feint._

_The only possible good news was that the energy signatures of the powered biologics had vanished at almost the same instant, possibly indicating that they had been killed by the explosion that had destroyed their attackers. If so, even with losses several orders of magnitude greater than the Zonemind’s worst case estimates it was worth the cost. And if through some incalculable circumstance the biologics had survived, there was nothing the Zonemind could do — it had no additional land-based combat robots in a position to intercept in numbers that have reasonable odds of success, and with the Vultures assigned to Tokyo gone there would be no air assets available in time, not even for reconnaissance._

_Then the first jamming signal vanished, and the Zonemind was again in contact with a number of its units tasked with dealing with the main attack — not any immediately involved, that region was still blanketed, but reinforcements that it could direct. Which it did, ordering them to swing wide to strengthen the blocking forces on the left side of the ambush site. The main and most important battle still had to be fought._

/oOo\

Pluto _stepped_ back to the ramshackle concrete meeting room in the Resistance’s bunker headquarters, and as she expected found two _very_ unhappy women waiting for her. She’d only been gone a few minutes, so far as the two princesses was concerned, but that fact that she’d been gone at all told them that she’d gone _somewhere_ , and not just the Time Gates. The fact that she’d done so right after some sort of distant explosion massive enough to be heard deep in the bunker didn’t help.

In an icy-quiet tone, Serenity said, “I thought I ordered you not to get involved.”

“Not quite,” Setsuna replied with a grin. “You told me that because of my pregnancy I couldn’t get involved in the _fighting_ , or even risk it. Believe me, I was at no risk at all, Hotaru saw to that.”

“What?! That was _Hotaru_?” Usagi shouted.

“It certainly was,” Setsuna agreed, smile broadening, “and thanks to her there wasn’t a functioning combat robot within three or four miles of the Outers — everything within a two mile radius was simply annihilated, and everything for another mile or two out would have been crushed by collapsing buildings or falling debris. She even managed to blot every Vulture assigned to Tokyo out of existence without even knowing they were there. Our firefly _does_ have a range between a single building to a few blocks and an entire planet.”

Then, smile vanishing, she leaned back against the wall and rubbed at her face, looking tired. “And maybe now that she’s saved her parents’ counterparts without killing any innocents, her nightmares won’t be so bad.”

“And she didn’t ... kill any innocents, I mean? That isn’t just a lie you told her to make her feel better?” Serenity quietly asked. “Not every human being left in Japan is part of the Resistance, after all, there are pockets of independent junk rats scattered throughout the city.”

Usagi blanched, then sighed in relief as Setsuna shook her head.

Not in that part,” Setsuna assured them. “The stored food stocks are long gone, and what few junk rats were scavenging in the area got out when they heard the port blow up. No, all Hotaru killed were rats, feral cats and dogs, and some birds. Oh, and she shifted the future location of the core of Crystal Tokyo by a dozen miles by clearing the ground for you.”

“And they’ll be all right?”

“Yes, I took them to the Time Gates so they could reassume their Senshi forms and heal up, and suggested a place when we left where they could hole up until the main fight’s over. The Zonemind’s well and truly distracted at the moment, so as long as they don’t stumble across a Scorpion scout they’ll be fine and since they won’t be moving that’s not likely to happen.”

Usagi relaxed, until Serenity asked, “And Luna and Artemis?”

Setsuna’s face tightened. “They’ve been delayed again.”

/oOo\

Ranma crouched by the window, peeking around the edge with one eye at the outside view. Not that there was much to see, thanks to old-Mercury, a handful of yards and everything faded into thick, cold fog. She’d said that the fog would extend a good half a mile in all directions, thick enough that the sharpest vision couldn’t see more than a few feet — except for a circle around the building the survivors were forted up in. Whenever the robots came back, they would be coming in blind.

“Ranma, will you stop that and finish eating? You need it, and there’s no point in looking, Mercury said that she’d be able to tell up when the robots in her fog bank started moving.”

Ranma turned away from the window toward Akane, just in time for her lover to pop a broken-off piece of ration bar into her mouth. She was seriously tempted to spit it out — she suspected that it hadn’t tasted all that good to begin with, and the passing years hadn’t improved the flavor — but Akane was right: clearing out the Hoplites dropped into the square had been neither safe (as the bloody bandage around Akane’s arm where a bullet had dug a furrow indicated) nor easy. In fact, that was why both of them had changed back to their ragged ‘civilian’ clothing. Their new costumes from Crystal Tokyo might be the next thing to indestructible and easily washed clean, but they did _need_ to be washed — the two couldn’t simply self-clean by reverting to ‘civilian’ form and back like the Senshi, and after the fight in the square both girls had been liberally covered with a sticky mixture of oil and dirt. Even after the days spent sneaking through the ruined city and sleeping out in the rain, their camo-rags were _much_ cleaner than their actual costumes. And they’d needed to be as clean as possible, while moving the wounded such as Haruna to the single building that they’d decided to fort up in after whatever cost/benefit analysis the combat robots had that passed for courage had finally broken and they’d pulled back. _Too back we couldn’t change our hair the same way we could our clothes, not much wet-wipes can do for that matted mess._

Not much they could do about it until this was over, though. And no one was stupid enough to think it was over, the robots would be back. So everyone was ‘tanking up’ and grabbing naps while they had the chance, trusting Mercury to tell them when the robots were on their way back. _Almost_ everyone, anyway.

Ranma twisted around to stick her head out the window, briefly looking along the side of the building at the thick oak trees now filling the street there. That was old-Jupiter’s work, after they had consolidated their positions. She and her fellow Senshi had scattered a seemingly endless supply of acorns across the cratered square and down the streets for blocks on three sides, before she had reached out through the earth and caused all those acorns to sprout and grow. Within minutes, a thick forest filled all that ground. _Not_ on all four sides, unfortunately, but after a quick discussion old-Ranma and old-Venus had decided that approaching the enemy’s own consolidated position risked having them resume their assault while the Senshi were scattered and out in the open. Still, there was no way the enemy was going to be flanking them — nothing larger than Scorpions would be able to squeeze between the trees, and the combat robots had nothing to cut down the trees and nowhere near enough explosives to clear them that way. Unfortunately, the effort required at actually _grow_ all those trees had used up old-Jupiter, the exhausted Senshi now sleeping next to old-Endymion. They were down one more powerhouse. _So we make do._

“Ranma, stop that!”

Akane grabbed her lover and pulled her back into the room. “The robots might not be moving, but that doesn’t mean they can’t start shooting blind.”

Ranma sighed. “I know, I know, it’s just —”

She broke off as Akane stuffed another piece of ration bar into her mouth. “It’s just that even after all that meditation you’re just no good at _waiting_ , I know,” Akane finished for her. “So why don’t you concentrate on something else while we wait? Like what happened to you at the Time Gates. How could they be tied to ki?”

Ranma chuckled ( _not_ ‘giggled’!) at how well Akane had come to know her. Still, she did have a point, one that had bothered Ranma off and on since she’d learned the Time Gates used ki, somehow. “Good question. I mean, the Time Gates are about seein’ the past an’ the maybe-futures. I could see ki maybe kinda-sorta helpin’ if the Gates just predicted what _we_ do, but I don’t think they do — I think they predict what the _world_ does, earthquakes an’ tsunamis, things like that, an’ the world doesn’t ... doesn’t have ki....”

Akane grinned as Ranma’s voice faded away, the oil-and-redhead’s eyes losing focus as her thoughts turned inward. _Mission accomplished_. She gathered up what was left of the ration bar and headed for the rooms in the side of the building facing the square and the forest that now filled it. Ranma wasn’t going to be finishing it, so some of the wounded in the impromptu aid center there would like the leftovers.

Behind her, Ranma was lost in a thought that had never really occurred to her before — where did ki go after leaving living bodies? That it was going _somewhere_ was a given. If it wasn’t, after the millions and millions of years of life, the world would be saturated with ki.

_So I fire off a moko takabisha, it hits and lays on a world a’ hurt, and ... what? It’s not being absorbed by whatever idiot I hit with it, I think I’d pick that up when I sense people’s ki. So, it spreads out,_ thins _out to the point that I can’t sense it, and ... what?_

Ranma thought back to the Time Gates, the way the concentration of ki had been so intense that it had laid her and Akane out flat. Even the second time, opening herself up just the tiniest bit above the absolute minimum had been too much.

_Only that’s not quite what ya did, is it?_ Ranma thought as she reviewed her memory. _You were focused on Akane, reachin’ out to her, when ya got smacked._ Now that she thought about it, she suspected that her ki-sense _always_ worked that way — ‘riding’ her own ki, sensing when it came into contact with the ki that others were constantly radiating, until her ki grew too diffuse for her to ‘ride’. That would explain how she — he at the time, often enough — had been surprised in the past. But she _hadn’t_ been ‘riding’ her ki the second time at the Time Gates — at least she didn’t think so, not until she’d reached out to Akane, and she’d been sensing ki just fine. _Okay, so let’s try that._ She shifted where she sat into her own comfortable meditative form, closed her eyes, and turned her focus inward. She was already centered, so it was just a matter opening herself up without ‘riding’ her ki, not _trying_ to sense the world around her, just like she’d done at the Time Gates without knowing what she was doing....

Ranma gasped, eyes flying open as she ‘dropped’ back into herself, her hold on her center shattered under the shock of what she had sensed. It was like there was a whole _world_ out there that she’d never known existed, even while she’d been living in it. Yes, it wasn’t _that_ much of a surprise to be able to sense the lives around her, some insect pinpricks, the torches of ‘civilians’ (even if armed and dangerous civilians), the bonfires of the ki adepts and the ... others, she didn’t know what they were ... even the trees of the new forest on three sides. And back in one of the rooms with the wounded, the bonfire of life closest to her heart. But surrounding ... _encompassing_ all those lives there was a _sea_ of ki swirling like a thin mist _everywhere!_

_Okay, Ranma, you’ve been surprised before, ya can’t let it shake ya like this, that can get people killed. So let’s try again._

Closing her eyes again, she again fell back into her center, carefully opened herself up without ‘reaching out’, and ... _Yeah, that’s as cool the second time as it was the first_.

For a time she simply ‘watched’ the ki swirling around, enjoying the smooth, swirling random patterns constantly forming and reforming all around her. But after a little while she frowned thoughtfully. The patterns weren’t as random as she’d thought. She would have thought that all that free-floating ki would be pushed away from living beings — those lives were constantly pushing out their own ki to add to the mix, after all — but instead it was ... swirling? ... around every living being that Ranma could sense. Why? She focused on those swirling patterns ... and those patterns vanished as the ki from the living sprang into sharp relief. _Right, I gotta focus without focusing._

For a _third_ time, she opened up without ‘reaching out’. It wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t something the young martial artist was completely unfamiliar with — _Kinda like checkin’ out a possible opponent without_ really _checkin’ him out, keepin’ him from realizing he’s being watched_ , she thought distantly as she focused-without-focusing on the swirling patterns around the nearest lives ... and lost them _again_ as fresh shock shot through her — those lives _were_ absorbing the foreign ki!

_Okay, let’s try this_ again! Focusing-without-focusing yet again, she frowned thoughtfully. Yes, the swirling patterns were forming because ki was being absorbed into living beings at the same time it was constantly radiating away, but there was so much _more_ radiating away than being absorbed. So where was the _rest_ of it going? She shifted her unfocused focus away from the lives blazing around her, to the rest of the free ki flowing around them, and this time managed to keep her shock from dropping her out of her center. Yes, the ki was constantly flowing in currents constantly shifting as the lives it surrounded shifted within it, but it was also drifting ever-so-slowly toward the _unliving_ objects it encompassed ... as those dead and never-alive things ever-so-slowly absorbed ki from the air around them.

Ranma dropped her focus as she considered the ramifications of what she’d learned. In some sense she was certain she didn’t understand at all, everything that lived was not only ... connected ... in some fashion with everything else that lived, but everything _non_ living around it as well. And somehow, the creators of the Time Gates either stumbled across that connection without understanding what they’d found, or didn’t pass along that understanding before they died. Certainly Puu hadn’t had a clue about the Time Gates’ use of ki before Ranma and Akane told her, and if anyone should have known about it, it would have been the Guardian of the Gates. Right? Right! So ... just how _did_ the Time Gates make sense of all that ki. For that matter, how was _she_ doing it. She couldn’t be ‘riding’ her own radiating ki, that was what had always washed out all that ambient ki that she’d never realized was even there. _Somehow, all that ki out there, even the ki that’s bein’ absorbed by everything around it, must be connected ta all the rest a’ the ki — includin’ the ki I’m absorbing. It’s like,_ any _ki is_ all _ki. An’ if it_ is _all connected ..._

She thought of how she and Akane had learned to ‘entwine’ their ki together, to let their emotions ‘ride’ that ki — but only when they were touching each other. But if all ambient ki was connected, all ki somehow ‘one’, then maybe a physical connection wasn’t needed! Carefully keeping her excitement from interfering with her center, she sorta-focused on pillar of centered-clear life that was her other heart and again found that familiar presence, within a few feet of the life signature that Ranma recognized as her counterpart’s wounded granddaughter, Haruna. She shuddered for a moment at the thought of what the two could be doing together; it undoubtedly had to do with embarrassing stories from their lives together before That Day. Akane had certainly enjoyed telling those stories to Hotaru and Usa, and the ki Haruna was radiating was saturated with good humor, even hilarity. _Focus, Ranma, worry about that later._ She entwined about her own centered-clear ki the love that bound her and Akane together and tried to somehow give that ki purpose, ‘intent’ of its own. _‘I love you.’_ It wasn’t easy, she tried time and again with no effect, sweat beginning to bead on her face. But even as she felt her mental control begin to fray something _finally_ seemed to ‘click’ and she sensed Akane start and whirl around. _Gotcha_ , she thought with a grin.

Wait, she had sensed Akane _whirl around!_ She wasn’t just sensing different beings, she was actually sensing _shapes!_ She was sensing _movement!_ This was _great!_ If she could perfect this, she and Akane, anyone else she taught it to would be able to sense _everything_ moving around them, not just life forms....

Ranma dropped out of center yet again under a wave of exultation, but this time she didn’t bother to berate herself for her lack of control as her mind raced, considering the ramifications of what she’d just discovered. Once, during an otherwise boring history class when he was sharing a school with Ryoga, Ranma had heard about how militaries had once made use of echolocation to detect aircraft before it was abandoned for radar. The teacher had offhandedly mentioned that echolocation could actually ‘see’ around corners and over hills, and he had thought that would be a cool tool for his technique collection and tried to develop his own. He had failed miserably, and so never told anyone about the attempt, _especially_ his father. But this was even better, it somehow actually ‘saw’ _through_ walls, not just around them!

_Now don’t get carried away, Ranma, let’s make sure it works before ya start jumpin’ around. It isn’t gonna do ya any good if it can’t reach very far or ya can’t keep it up._

Taking deep, even breaths, she slowly brought her excitement under control until she could again allow her excitement to flow through her without disturbing her center, and again non-focused on the ki around her, building a picture of her surroundings: first, the shape and ‘feel’ of the room she was sitting in, then the rooms around her ... further out and up, more and more rooms and corridors and people until she again encompassed Akane and Haruna within her widening sphere of awareness. Unable to help herself, she sent another ‘pulse’ of love to her lover, this time mixing in mischievous delight, and grinned when Akane again jerked around. Then, fun done for the moment, she resumed her push, beginning to sweat as her awareness expanded out further and further, beyond the building into the new urban forest on three sides and across the street and into the buildings and down the streets on the fourth side.

There the difficulty jumped exponentially as she encountered old-Mercury’s cold fog. It wasn’t _alive_ , precisely, but it seemed that whatever magic Mercury used to create that fog it mixed in a bit of her own distinctive ki into it as well, and that ki acted as its own thin fog. Not as dense to Ranma’s ki-sense as it was to eye sight and sound, though, and Ranma gritted her teeth as she pushed on ... until she stiffened as she found new shapes in the ki-fog: eight-legged, man-sized spider shapes that had to be Tarantulas; huge, humanoid Hoplites; even a few four-tracked tank-like shapes that had to be more Juggernauts. There were a _lot_ of robots. And even though they weren’t alive, somehow they seemed to be saturated with anger, hate, the _need_ to rend, destroy, kill. _So what are they waiting for?_

As if in response to Ranma’s thought, the front ranks of the robots jerked into motion, beginning to flow down the streets toward the rebels’ makeshift fortress. _‘They’re coming!’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually going up earlier than I expected, I’d intended to post the last battle as one ginormous chapter. However, not only did Ranma’s latest exploration into the nature of ki run away from me, but I am going to be facing delays on the rest of this. First, like the finale of _The Flower War_ , I’m going to have to choreograph the Dance and that is going to take some time. Second, I’m going to off on my summer vacation in a week, a week for Shakespeare, family, and camping in the mountains, and not much if any writing. So for all three reasons, I decided to post here, at the natural break-point just before all hell breaks open again.
> 
> As for how important Ranma’s explorations will be for the fight, I don’t know yet. But if I write the next story arc going forward and especially the one following it is going to be very important, indeed!


	20. The End of the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a new poll up on my fanfiction.net profile page on whether I should post the first chapters for the new _Raven_ and _Ranma the Naïve Succubus_ stories before I finish off _Yrthbound_ , anyone that has an opinion feel free to drop in and vote.

_Finally! The Tokyo Zonemind — all the Zoneminds, really — prided themselves on being logical beings, not driven by emotions as were the biologics that had serendipitously created beings superior to themselves. (Though logic could only take one so far, as evidenced by the deep divisions between the Zoneminds on such fundamental issues as how to deal with the environment and the surviving humans.)_

_Still, even as coldly logical a thing as the Tokyo Zonemind had found itself suffering from growing impatience as, every time its calculations and recalculations were about to push it into sending the gathered reinforcements into the blind zone, another jammer would be destroyed and that blind zone lose another semi-circular chunk. And it would have to recalculate yet again, perhaps order the reinforcements a little closer if the destroyed jammer had been in the right place, and wait yet again to see if any other jammers would be destroyed._

_But in the end its patience had been rewarded, as the rate at which jammers were being destroyed (except for a few it required be brought in for examination) until it finally had contact with all of its forces around the trapped biologics and had a full assessment of the situation._

_That situation was far from ideal. The new forest that had sprung up on three sides of the single building the biologics were occupying was thick, impenetrable by any combat robots. Scorpions were small enough, of course, but lacked the firepower to be effective. It ordered a number of them into the tangle anyway, of course, to act as scouts and to carry out attacks of opportunity, but the only avenue of attack available on the ground was a frontal assault that was going to be costly however it calculated the odds._

_Still, that frontal assault would fix the defenders’ attention nicely, and its new plan would capitalize on that._

_It downloaded the plan to the Centurions along with decision trees for numerous options going forward (it had long ago learned that even its computing capacity could be overwhelmed by the chaos of the battlefield), then ordered the assault._

/oOo\

_A few minutes earlier:_

As Akane again felt her lover’s ‘touch’, Ranma’s love filling her, she broke off the story she was telling of her and Ranma’s rocky early days and whipped around — no Ranma. And this time, that love had been mixed with whimsical humor, the equivalent of a giggling fit.

“What’s wrong?” Haruna asked, her eyes scanning the room the pair occupied along the other wounded before focusing in the trees visible through the empty windows.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Akane hastened to assure her, “Ranma’s just feeling frisky.”

“Really?” Haruna frowned as she concentrated. “Wow, Ranma, you’re really good with the Umisenken, I’m not picking up even a hint that you’re here.”

“Oh, she isn’t here,” Akane said. “I left her up front playing around with some new ideas she had about ki recently.” Giggling, she added, “Of course, the first thing she does with a new breakthrough is to tease me.”

Haruna repeated, “Really?” She stared at the wall toward the front of the building more or less in Ranma’s direction. “It’s kinda hard to believe it, Grandpa’s always been so serious. Dad says he’s always been that way, even before the war. I wonder what happened?”

Akane frowned thoughtfully as she thought about it, then turned white as a ghost as she remembered Ranma going toe to toe with the next thing to a god, facing a fiery death to protect her ... and what Pluto had told them had happened when this world’s version of her snapped and had to be stopped. She whispered, “I did.”

“What?”

Shaking away her sudden melancholy, Akane forced a smile for her lover’s kinda-sorta-older-than-her granddaughter. “Nothing. Anyway, since Ranma doesn’t seem to be playing anymore, back to the story. There he and I were, spinning around on the ice —”

_‘They’re coming!’_

Akane whipped around at what seemed like Ranma’s voice shouting in her head, like the earlier touches the ‘sound’ seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “What was — !?” She broke off as she felt her Senshi communicator vibrating. Hastily fumbling it out of its special pocket in her costume’s bike shorts, she sucked in a breath at the sight of the blinking red stud that was older-Mercury’s signal that her Silver Millennium computer had detected the latest assault rolling in. “The story will have to wait till later, time to go,” she said as she put the communicator back in its pocket and grabbed up her assault rifle. “Take care of yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me, if they actually get this far you’ll have a lot more to worry about,” Haruna replied. “Just be careful. I’ll want to hear the rest of the story, and there’s a lot more of us that’ll want to hear more. Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt Nabiki don’t talk about when they were kids at all.”

Akane thought of all the embarrassing stories about Ranma she could give them, and grinned. “You’re on,” she said.

/\

In the hazy, dim light of her Veil, Jofrithr watched Akane rush from the room. She bit at her lip as she wondered what to do, _really_ wishing she had taken Endymion’s words more to heart. Oh, she’d certainly taken seriously his comment about shrapnel not caring about what was in its way, just not his order to head for safety. The result of her decision to stick with the fighters that made up the bait leading the robots into ambush combined with her efforts to keep to cover as she moved was that she’d fallen behind, and been on the wrong side of the square when Endymion had sprung the trap ... and right in the _middle_ of the square when the Wraiths had roared overhead and the Hoplites had fallen out of the sky to assault the Resistance positions in the buildings. She had never been so terrified in all her short life — right up to the moment that the burning Wraith falling out of the sky almost landed on her before blowing up. _Then_ she learned what true terror was.

She’d been curled into a sobbing ball desperately fighting to maintain her Veil and praying none of the Hoplites stepped on her, when two girls not all that much older than her had passed by her as they tore into the robots with a fervor fierce enough that she had been able to borrow some of their courage, enough to uncurl and sneak after them as they carved their way through the robots’ ranks. She’d been following them ever since.

Only now it seemed Akane and Ranma were going to be headed back into combat, and even if the thought of following them back into that hell didn’t leave her practically paralyzed with fear, Jofrithr’s power simply wasn’t all that useful with so much random death filling the air. Before she had always regretted that her inheritance wasn’t more combat-oriented, in spite of the assurances of Grandmother Belldandy, Aunt Urd and Aunt Skuld that everyone had their part to play. Now, she was inexpressibly grateful.

It seemed that Haruna wasn’t inexpressibly grateful, though, not from her conflicted expression.

_Come to think of it, she has a wild rep, too. I’ll bet she_ —

Just as Jofrithr feared, Haruna’s expression firmed and she picked up a makeshift crutch and began to lever herself to her feet. _I knew it, she’s a Saotome’s Saotome. Lunatics, the lot of them,_ Jofrithr thought with a fourteen-year-old’s certainty of opinion inherited from her elders. She instantly released her hold on her Veil with a grin, only to drop as a small ball of glowing blue-white flashed toward her. “Friend! Friend!” she yelled as she landed face down on hands and toes.

Haruna glared down at the young teenager, then looked up at the new scorch mark on the wall across the room. “Jofrithr?” she asked. “Don’t startle me like that. So what’re you doing here?”

“Uhhhh ...” Jofrithr scrambled for some excuse that would keep the young woman out of harm’s way. She couldn’t try to physically restrain her, after all, even with Haruna’s leg at least temporarily crippled the Saotome would be able to hand her her head. Then she heard the scritch of tree branches that hadn’t been there an hour earlier rubbing against the outside wall, and grinned. “I’m keeping an eye on our brand new forest,” she replied. “Who knows what the flatlines might sneak through it, and if the fighting gets bad enough any able-bodied guards will get sucked into the fight up front.”

Haruna glared at her for a moment, obviously not fooled for a moment, but turned her head to stare through the empty window at the trees that came right up to the wall for a time before finally sighing. “Yeah, you’re right,” she reluctantly agreed, and painfully lowered herself back down to her pallet on the floor. “But don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t exactly answer my question. What are you doing _here_? I thought Endymion was going to send you back to headquarters.”

“Uhhhh....”

The cacophony of gunfire from the approaching horde washed through the building, and Jofrithr happily focused on trying to figure out what was happening from the sound. Not that her parents’ and grandparents’ opprobrium would be so easy to avoid when their turn came. For a moment Jofrithr wondered how long she could avoid going home by volunteering for outpost duty.

Then the first of the missiles slammed into the building.

/\

Akane ran into the room where she’d left Ranma to find her lover crouched by the window, her arm lifted so that she could stare through her shimmering, translucent shield out at older-Mercury’s fog surrounding the building. Ignoring the men that had joined the redhead in the room and were crouching by other windows, Akane crouched down below window-height and scuttled across the floor to join Ranma. She whispered, “Anything yet?”

Ranma murmured, “Listen. Hear anything?”

Closing her eyes, Akane focused on her hearing, straining for any of the grinding, clanking, screeching sounds that had helped fill the world during their first clash with the robots — nothing except the sounds of the human presence in the building. Not even the few birds that she’d heard as she’d moved about the ruined city could be heard, the earlier battle must have scared them all away. “No, nothing,” she said, then stiffened as the first clanking rumblings reached her. “Wait.”

The sound quickly grew louder, eerily echoing and distorted by the thick fog, and she shivered as fear filling the emotion-charged ki radiating from the others in the room washed over her. She glanced to one side at the nearest rebel, noting the man’s grip on his rifle so tight his hand was bleached white. _This is bad._

She hissed, “Ranma, let’s change back to our costumes.”

“What, now!?” Ranma twisted to stare at her.

“Hey, it’s a Senshi-type fight, right? We should wear the uniform. Besides, It’ll probably be as messy as the last one, and we don’t have another change of clothes with us. Our uniforms can’t get worse than they already are.”

Ranma stared at her, and while Akane couldn’t sense her lover’s emotions — Ranma was staying centered and so her ki was clear, and they weren’t touching — but she could practically feel the redhead’s tension as her eyes shifted toward some of the men sharing the room with them. _Oh. Oops._ Akane leaned forward to lay a hand on Ranma’s arm.

“Ranma, none of these men are Happosai,” she whispered in her lover’s ear, “and even if they were, you could kick all their asses combined. And so can the robots. They know that and they’re scared, so how about we give them a little hope to focus on?”

Ranma had stiffened at Happosai’s name and she jerked around to stare at Akane for a long moment, eyes wide, as her ki-shield vanished. Finally she shook herself, closed her eyes, and after a moment went still — a relaxed stillness that Akane knew meant she was reaching out to sense the world around her. After a moment her eyes opened and she nodded. “Okay, let’s do it,” she agreed.

“Right.” Akane checked to make sure she was between windows so she couldn’t be seen from outside, then stood up and took a deep breath as she tried to ignore the men abruptly focusing on her. _This time, don’t miss your boot._ She spun into Amagurikan speed and a few seconds later whirled to a stop, again dressed in her filthy red, white and blue costume. Glancing around at the appreciative grins the men were suddenly sporting, she growled wordlessly even as she felt her cheeks heat up then grinned as the men’s heads snapped back to the windows. She ran her fingers through her oil-soaked, wind-blown hair and sighed. “At least my costume matches my hair again,” she murmured, then smiled encouragingly at Ranma as she stepped back. “Your turn.”

Ranma glanced around and the men now studiously ignoring the two girls, took a deep breath and nodded. Rising to stand where Akane had been, she spun into her own whirlwind of flashes of skin and clothes and a moment later slowed to a halt, now also dressed in her Senshi-like uniform, to face a grinning Aegis.

Aegis stepped forward to run her fingers through Vanguard’s oily hair. “That is always _so_ hot,” she whispered. She leaned forward, lips parting for a soft kiss ... and dropped to the floor beside Vanguard as the world exploded into ear-bursting cacophony, bullets slamming into the stone of the outside wall and coming through the windows like horizontal hail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know I was planning on one massive climactic chapter, but circumstances conspired against me: my vacation time off stretched from one week to two weeks, these scenes ran away from me as usual so they were long enough for a separate chapter, and the choreography for the final battle has been kicking my butt and I didn’t want everyone wondering if I had died, or something. Oh, and I wanted to let everyone know about the poll I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter and didn’t want to kick out a “chapter” that was just the announcement for the poll — I don’t really care for it when other fanfic writers do that, and so avoid doing it myself.
> 
> Part of the reason this chapter ran away from me is because of the interaction between Jofrithr and Haruna. The Saotomes and the Morisatos are two of the three legs that the Resistance stands on (the third being the Senshi), and the thought occurred to me that they are going to have very different, almost diametrically opposed family “cultures.”


	21. A Moment's Inattention ...

As the air in the room filled with wall fragments and plaster dust from the bullets hammering into the back wall, adding a fresh gray patina to two girls’ already oil-soaked hair and uniforms, they crawled to adjacent windows and lifted newly-summoned ki-shields. Ignoring the bullets now ricocheting from those shields, they stared through them as the first arachnid-like Tarantulas came scuttling out of old-Mercury’s mist, firing as they came. The robots were burning through their ammunition at an incredible rate, but the suppressing fire they were laying down was effective. Ice, lightning, and golden chains were already returning fire from other windows, throwing pieces of the Tarantulas back along their advance as the Senshi blew holes in the oncoming horde, but the holes were filled by new eight-legged, human-sized scuttling combat units as fast as they were formed. And the ones advancing through Vanguard and Aegis’s zone of responsibility were getting a free pass, the girls unable to fire their own rifles while maintaining their shields and the men with them unable to return fire without risking almost certain injury or death. _So let’s change that_ , Vanguard thought grimly, _before we’re overrun_.

Her instincts were screaming at her to close the distance, charge into them behind her shield the same way she had with the Hoplites in the now-tree-filled square, but her counterpart had taken her aside afterward and privately explained to her why that was a Bad Idea when almost all their heavy hitter worked best at range, however well it had worked out that time. Still, there were alternatives and her mind was flashing through them as she shifted into combat computer-mode. She shouted out over the din of gunfire, “Akane, watch what I do, then move down two windows and follow my lead!”

Aegis glanced at her and nodded, and Vanguard created a shield on each arm and lifted them to cover the windows she was crouched between. With her back to the outer wall she glanced to each side and grimaced — the shields were in their usual triangular shape, from her training under Doug-sensei. They would provide _some_ cover for the men, but she could do better than that! She stared at one of her shields, frowning in concentration, and the shimmering, translucent energy _stretched_ to fill the whole window. A moment later two small half-circle openings appeared along the bottom against the window sill for gun ports. She called out, “There you go, guys, fire away to your hearts’ content!” As two manically grinning men rose from their hiding place beneath the window and stuck the barrels of their guns through the openings to return fire, Vanguard shifted her attention to her other shield and repeated the process.

Aegis had been watching intently, and now she nodded, leaned forward to peck her lover on the lips, and scuttled along the wall, keeping low and circling the men crouched under the windows, and quickly replicated Vanguard’s actions. But Vanguard wasn’t watching, she’d closed her eyes and her lips pulled back in a snarl as the pressure of maintaining the shields under the constant hail of bullets grew heavier and heavier — she’d maintained shield and sword for extended periods of time before, and that same day her shield had held through impacts much heavier than the gunfire she was blocking now, but she’d never tried to maintain two shields at once under such constant pressure and sweat was beading on her face as she fought to protect the men fighting to hold back the Tarantulas.

Vanguard instantly recognized one major flaw in her idea — she couldn’t see what was going on! And with the world-shaking chaos of the assault and the strain of maintaining two large shields being constantly hammered on, she dare try to use her newly-discovered personal radar. She was having to strain to maintain her center as it was. She shouted to one of the men next to her, “How we doin’?”

He didn’t turn to look at her, keeping his eyes fixed out the window through her shield, but she could see a scarred cheek distorted by half of a fierce grin as he continued firing. “We’re doing just fine, as long as the ammo holds out. They’re having to climb over their own dead ... well, as dead as a robot gets. And once the ammo runs low it’ll be up to you and the rest of — everybody down!” He followed his own shout, yanking his rifle clear as he dropped to the floor just ahead of the rest of the men, curling into a ball against the wall.

Vanguard waited just long enough for the four men at her windows to drop before banishing the shields and following suit, Aegis right behind her. She hadn’t quite hit the floor when the first missiles slammed into the building right above the windows where the ceiling and wall joined. The world seemed to vanish in thunder and flame, the force of the explosion hammering her into the floor. She barely felt the bits of metal and stone peppering her back and legs as her breath was knocked out of her.

Forcing herself to roll to a sitting position, she desperately sucked in air and began coughing, the air filled with smoke and plaster dust. At least the ki-visor she’d come up with after getting splashed across the face with acidic blood was keeping the smoke and dust out of her eyes. (She was distantly surprised that she’d managed to keep her center and maintain it through that, she really was getting good ... too bad she couldn’t filter the air yet, something else to consider.) She strained to see where Aegis had been to find her on her hands and knees with a hacking couch as she tried to clear her own lungs. She was a bit bloodied from the shrapnel, but Vanguard had to fight not to sag with relief as she realized her lover was all right. She shouted “Check the men!” and barely waited long enough for Aegis’s shaky nod of acknowledgement before whirling back to peek over the window sill.

A clear ice wall stretched across the road in front of the building just in front of the edge of older-Mercury’s mist, cutting off the dimly visible Tarantulas. Vanguard frowned for a moment, wondering why Mercury ... whichever Mercury, but probably the younger, she couldn’t imagine the older one could handle both the mist and a wall at the same time ... hadn’t created it before. Then she noticed that the wall was already fracturing under the Tarantulas’ fire. _Right, it’s not gonna hold long enough ta make the effort worth it, unless there’s nothin’ else for it._ She summoned her own assault rifle from her stuff-space and braced it on the window sill, ready to fire as soon as the Tarantulas broke through.

Behind the robots visible through the ice, dim flashes lit up the mist and fresh Hoplite-launched rockets roared out to slam into the second story, again shaking the building ... higher and slightly to the side of the first strike, though, no threat to Vanguard’s piece of the action.

Aegis settled at the window next to her, and Vanguard asked, “The men?”

“One dead, a couple badly hit, the rest walking wounded getting them back to the medics. They’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“We may not have a few minutes,” Vanguard said, wincing as the first bullets from the Tarantulas punched through the ice and a hole opened up. “The two of us alone aren’t gonna be enough ta hold them back with just our rifles. Besides, there’s those missiles. We’re gonna need ta take it to ‘em again.”

Aegis sighed. “You’re counterpart isn’t going to be happy. At least let him know first.”

“Yeah, I was gonna do that,” Vanguard replied, ignoring her lover’s doubtful look. She put down her rifle as Aegis fired a three-round burst to take down the first Tarantula through the new hole, and was reaching for her communicator when she felt it vibrating. She yanked it out and hit the ‘accept’ key.

Old-Ranma’s face appeared in the device’s tiny screen. “We’re going to be taking the fight to them,” he said without preamble. “You and Aegis will be focusing on keeping the Tarantulas away from the building while I and a few others will be breaking through to the Hoplites, take them down before their missiles bring down the building. Understand?”

“Understood, when?” Vanguard asked.

“Now.” The screen went blank.

Vanguard looked over at Aegis to find she’d sent her rifle back to stuff-space and had formed a ki-shield and sword. Vanguard formed her own shield and sword and, grinning fiercely, leaped through the window and landed on back of the first Tarantula to make it through the widening hole in the ice wall. She crouched behind her shield, blocking a fresh hail of bullets, and casually reversed her sword and slammed it down, through where she’d learned during the (too) long briefing in Crystal Tokyo that the Tarantulas’ CPU was located.

As the robot collapsed under her she rode it to the ground even as the ice wall in front of her collapsed and a fresh surge of Tarantulas scuttled forward, and Aegis bounded past her to meet the charge.

“Hey, wait for me!” Vanguard yelled, and sprang after her lover.

As the pair slashed into the wave of attackers, Wraiths roared in overhead to hover over the building.

/oOo\

Ranma paused for a moment, the redhead (thanks to the rain) letting Venus take the point with her scythe-tipped chains, Jupiter just behind her. The two Senshi continued to carve their way through the ranks of the robots in front of the Hoplites, lashing out with her chains to imbed the scythe blades into the robots, then tossing the chains to Jupiter (the younger one — Ranma had trouble telling them apart, but the older one was down after creating the forest around their fort) to electrify while Morisato Daichi’s force wall covered one flank and her Mars dealt with the robots on the other flank with flaming wall and arrows hot enough to vaporize bullets and armor.

Deciding she was safe enough for a few moments, she looked up toward the Wraiths that had just come to a hover over their makeshift fort, and winced when she saw the open back bay ramp of a Wraith dropping toward the roof. She only caught a split-second glimpse before the changing angle cut off her view, but it was enough to tell her what was happening — the flatscans were assaulting down through the roof as well as the ground floor.

For a moment she considered turning back and leaving the Hoplites to the rest of her slapdash team, but a misty flash of light out of the corner of one eye caught her attention, and she turned and fired off a dark blood-red Moko Takabisha. The Hoplite-launched missile she’d just destroyed short of its target — her team — peppered them with shrapnel, but nothing her and the Senshi’s healing factors couldn’t handle and Jupiter had shielded Daichi with her own body.

And the explosion distracted Venus for just a second, and she was flung back as bursts of gunfire stitched across her stomach and chest.

Ranma leaped forward to land beside Venus, pouring ki into her legs and hips to casually kick aside a Tarantula lining up for another shot, then glanced down as the Senshi forced herself to her knees, clutching at her chest and hacking up blood. “I’ll be all right!” Venus shouted over the racket as she imbedded fresh chains in the Tarantulas in front of her and tossed the ends to Jupiter. “They didn’t penetrate my uniform, and the hit on my arm missed the bone, clean through. The Wraiths?” she yelled louder, to be heard over the racket of fresh electricity flowing down the chains and cooking off the robots’ internally-stored ammunition. They were too close for the long chains now, and Ranma charged the robots directly behind the ones just destroyed, the blood-red ki of her aching hate flaming around her hands. Venus was right behind him, only pausing long enough to manifest chains around her fists.

As Ranma ripped a Tarantula’s leg off and buried her fist in the opening before firing off a mini-Moko Takabisha straight into its innards, she shouted, “They’ll have to deal with them themselves, keeping the flatscans from coming through the roof won’t help if the Hoplites bring down the building!” Or at least, the middle of the building — the way the Hoplites were firing down a street at a building stretching across the top of a T-intersection meant the robots had limited targeting options. But even that would be a disaster, killing many of the defenders and separating the survivors into two groups unable to support each other that could each be taken down separately.

Venus nodded as she created short chains in each hand to spin in circles in front of her, sending a barrage of bullets ricocheting back at their firers, then wiped at the blood still oozing from her mouth. “Hope everyone’s still there when we get back.”

Ranma nodded, then fired off another Moko Takabisha as a fresh rocket volley roared past overhead, destroying the only missile that had targeted his team. She whipped around just long enough to see fresh explosions track across their building, then turned back and leaped over the last rank of Tarantulas and raced towards the giant humanoid robots now visible though the mist. Her team could keep the Tarantulas from shooting her in the back, and she could take down the big boys so they all could get back while they still had friends and comrades to get back to.

/oOo\

Vanguard snarled as she felt her communicator begin vibrating halfway through her roll across the rain-puddled broken asphalt of the street to smother the oil smearing her uniform that had caught fire somehow in spite of the light rain. Fire out, she rolled up to her feet and snatched the communicator from her pocket as she crouched and thrust her lifesword straight forward between a Tarantula’s front optical sensors. “Now is not the time!” she shouted into the com, glancing over her shoulder for a split-second as a fusillade erupted behind her, then forward again when she saw Aegis was dealing with the Tarantulas that had slipped around their flanks.

“Make time!” a visibly pale, sweating Mercury snarled. “The Wraiths overhead are dropping Tarantulas on the roof! Your Mercury’s going to make a fresh ice wall, fall back and clear out any robots on our side when she does, then provide cover for Masazumi when he joins you so he can blow the Wraiths away.”

“You got it.” Vanguard missed Mercury’s reply when she had to form a shield on the same arm as the hand holding the com and block a fresh burst of gunfire, and when she’d shifted so she could both block and see the com’s tiny screen it was blank. _Right, fight now, apologize later._ “Akane,” she shouted, “we’re fallin’ back!”

Aegis waved her own com at Vanguard to show she’d gotten the message as her lifesword cut off the front-right legs the last Tarantula close to her, then sliced through its mounted gun as it fell. Fresh gunfire from the windows behind them took down Tarantulas well to each side of the pair, and Aegis turned to face Vanguard as she carefully backed up toward the building.

Vanguard leaped toward her, and _something_ seemed to explode in her mind — DANGER!!! She found herself twisting in mid-jump, her shield shifting as her mind shrieked _what was that!?_ ... and gunfire from a Tarantula that had levered itself up on the ‘corpse’ of another robot to make the angle stitched across her. Sparkles erupted across the shield from ricocheting bullets, pain lanced through an upper leg, her head snapped around and her vision went white as a bullet ricocheted off the edge of her ki-visor, and she spun through the air to slam down onto the broken sidewalk and wet overgrown grass of what had been a strip of lawn — and the scattered rubble from the missile strikes.

/\

Aegis had just slipped her com back in its pocket and was watching Vanguard leap toward her out of the corner of one eye with the rest of her attention on the new ice wall sweeping toward them (and over any Tarantulas that weren’t able to scuttle forward or back out of the way in time), when the burst of bullets caught her lover in mid-jump and the redhead lost control of her leap and crash landed to lie limp on the ground.

“RANMA!”

Aegis’s shield and lifesword vanished, gone with her hold on her center washed away by a wave of terror. She dropped to her knees next to the limp redhead, and almost sobbed with relief as Vanguard’s eyes fluttered open. “Hey Tomboy, watch the name ... when in uniform...”

“Like you’re one to talk, you’ve been calling me ‘Akane’ all day,” Aegis replied with a voice made husky by her scream.

Vanguard smiled faintly. “Haven’t been in uniform th’ whole day. Gonna trance now.” Her eyes sagged closed again.

“How is she?”

Aegis glanced up at the man swinging himself out of a window — Masazumi, she assumed. As he dropped to the overgrown lawn and strode toward her, she returned to her examination of her unconscious lover. Ranma had told her of how she had used her ki to check emergency room patients’ condition and by now she had weeks’ worth of experience with infusing her ki into her lover’s body, though that had been to pass along her own feelings of love (and lust often enough). Now, she forced herself to again let go of her lingering fear and find her center to infuse Vanguard’s body with her emotion-cleansed ki, and sagged as the last of her tension left her. “She’ll be all right,” she reported. “She has a gunshot wound to the leg, plus some cracked ribs and a serious concussion from falling on the rubble, I think, but nothing she can’t handle with the healing trance she’s in.”

“Great, however much we appreciate the help, I’d hate for one of your group to get seriously hurt in a fight that’s not really yours. Cover me while I take care of the Wraiths, and we can get her inside.”

Aegis looked up at what she could see of the manta ray-shaped aircraft past the edge of the roof. There would be no place in the building safe for a trance-helpless Vanguard if they and the robots they were dropping weren’t dealt with. “Right.” She reformed her lifesword and shield and rose to her feet, and stepped past Masazumi, focusing on her Mercury’s ice wall. Cracks from the hail of bullets hammering at it were already spreading. It wouldn’t last long. And this was the second wall Mercury had made, she was probably wiped out. _Definitely not cost-effective._

She ignored the earthshaking roar behind her, the wind trying to pull her back toward Masazumi, as mostly spent rounds tapped at her shield as the first bullets punched through the wall in an explosion of icy shards. She hastily glanced along the wall in both directions and saw other defenders waiting: some she knew, Mars and Venus (though native or hers she couldn’t tell), mostly strangers. Then the feel of the staccato impacts on her shield strengthened, and she refocused on the piece of the wall in front of her. Any time now ...

Her piece of the wall collapsed, and she charged forward to meet the Tarantulas scuttling forward over its remains, firing as they came, as behind her twin roars like oncoming freight trains erupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's why you shouldn't let yourself get distracted in the middle of a firefight.
> 
> Yes, it has been _way_ too long, especially for a chapter this short. I have twice as much actually written, but it looks like it'll be perhaps another week before I finish so I thought I'd post this much at the natural break-point.
> 
> I won't apologize for how long it's been, but I will say I'm sure everyone's heard the quip, "the beatings will continue until morale improves"? It doesn't work with Calliope, the Muses are too big for that. It didn't help that a new fanfic I encountered ( _Fate Be Changed_ by Araceil) has had me under continual assault by rabid plot bunnies for a story I'm almost certainly never going to write.
> 
> Anyway, one more chapter for the climax and one or two to wrap everything up and this one is done.
> 
> For any fanfiction.net perusers interested in weighing in on whether I should post the first chapters to the next Raven and R:TNS stories after this or after I finish up _Yrthbound_ , the poll in my profile at ff.net is still open.


	22. Feint and Strike

Luna crouched in the dark, hardly daring to breath. It had been a long crawl through the ventilation to the Tokyo Zonemind’s server room. They’d actually needed to make a second transfer when it turned out some internal changes not on the blueprints available to the Resistance had cut off what they’d hoped would be an easy path the rest of the way in. _That_ transfer had been rough — the deeper in they’d gotten the more the building had been modified for the robots’ purposes, and those purposes didn’t require the chairs, desks and shelves that helped give access to the ducts the two Mau needed. They had finally found an office that had actually been cut off by new walls, and managed to reach another duct that had _finally_ led to the server room. Once there, they even found that they didn’t have to hope that Artemis’s cutting torch wouldn’t attract attention or run out of fuel before finishing the job. The final grill wasn’t even bolted on, they could just push it out!

And when it hit the floor, that grill had made a racket loud enough to draw the attention of one of the barrel-shaped security robots scattered throughout the building. It had been sitting in the middle of the room ever since.

Finally, Artemis started pushing back and Luna slowly back up as noiselessly as she could, wincing at each slight clinking sound when her own harness scraped against the ventilation system’s metal walls. Eventually they reached a junction where they could get turned around face-to-face, and Luna hissed, “What are we _doing_?”

“We need to give the flatscan a reason for the grill falling,” Artemis replied. “My cutting torch isn’t needed anymore, so help me get it off. That’ll make me just one more feral pest. Then I can go out of the ventilation first and leave by the door, hopefully the flatscan will decide that I had pushed the grill out and follow me, or at least leave.”

Luna’s mind raced, trying desperately to come up with an alternate plan, one that didn’t involve her husband putting himself at risk ... well, _more_ at risk. But after a long minute she came up blank, and finally sighed. “All right, let’s get back to that sealed-off office and get your harness off — quickly, we’re taking too long.”

/oOo\

The newest of the wounded brought back having been made as comfortable as possible, Jofrithr and Haruna were listening to the sounds of combat, trying to figure out how things were going. Haruna had been the more successful, of course — unlike Jofrithr this was far from her first battle — and she was providing a running commentary for the younger girl when they heard the faint buzzing of their communicators. Scrabbling in her ragged clothes for her pouch, Haruna finally got out her com and hit the ‘accept’ key. The tiny screen lit up, showing Mercury halfway through what the two girls realized was a recorded and mass-broadcasted message: “— on the roof, and are coming down the inner stairwells. Tarantulas have been dropped into the holes blown open by missiles and on the roof, and are coming down the inner stairwells. Tarantulas have been dropped into —”

Haruna broke the connection and turned to her suddenly pale companion. She hurriedly said, “The wounded need guards —”

“— have guards, people like you that aren’t mobile but can still shoot,” Jofrithr broke in. “But better if the Tarantulas don’t get this far, right?”

“Well ... true,” Haruna reluctantly agreed, “but you aren’t trained for indoor combat, are you? Your Veil won’t help you when the lead and lasers are flying everywhere and there simply isn’t room to move.”

“Not if I get behind them,” Jofrithr replied, nodding toward the window. “The outside fire escape. Will they use those?”

“I ... no, probably not, not enough maneuvering room, too open. But they’ll be watching them.”

“And they won’t see me. My Veil, remember?”

Haruna hesitated, but finally nodded with a sigh. The Morisato was too young, but it wasn’t like Haruna could stop her if Jofrithr decided to ignore whatever moral authority she had over the younger girl, and that wasn’t much as the girl was just that — a Morisato. That family might be boringly proper, but they had an unshakable sense of duty. Besides, Jofrithr might be right, the situation _was_ desperate. “All right, you’d better hurry.” Then a thought occurred to her, and she grinned. “Make sure you let Mercury know what you’re up to, first. She’ll be surprised that it’s a Morisato that’s pulling the crazy stunt this time, instead of a Saotome.”

An already pale girl went ghost-white. She hastily replied, “You said I need to hurry so I’ll get moving call Mercury for me please bye!” She grabbed a rifle being held out to her by a nearby broadly grinning wounded man, along with a pouch full of loose ammo clips, and practically ran for the window. An easy hop to the window sill, then she seemed to waver like a rock-disturbed pool and was gone.

Haruna chuckled as she again raised her communicator and hit a button. When she saw Jofrithr again she would have to point out that the time to pull her Veil about her was _before_ she hopped up into a window in clear view of Kami-sama and everyone. Then the young, blue-haired face of the current operations commander appeared in the com’s tiny screen, and Haruna sobered. “Hey, Mercury, pass the word to anyone dealing with the Tarantulas coming down,” she said, “they’re going to have company.”

/\

Jofrithr felt her muscles constantly tighten as she climbed up the old, rusty fire escape, ignoring the chaotic roar of battle in the building below her as she carefully tested each step. She was up three stories and almost to the top, and both she and Haruna had been right: the Tarantulas’ _did_ have sentries posted keeping watch on the windows that let out onto the fire escape, but the Veil hid her presence from them. It didn’t take care of her _weight_ , unfortunately, and her heart had leaped into her throat when several stairs had broken under her feet and almost dropped her down all the stories she’d climbed.

“Movies, TV show, video games,” she murmured as she climbed, reciting all the things she had taken for granted growing up in the Sanctuary, and that no child her age that hadn’t grown up there had ever known — everything she was helping bring back. “The library,” — yes, even that, though schooling could be boring and the fiction just reminded her of the world that died, that would change when they won — “hot baths, real cooking in a real kitchen, plenty to eat, clean water, a soft bed. Vaccinations, antibiotics. Parents that don’t die.” That last she at least had a little experience with. Her father had been the one to join the war effort, and brought her mother to Sanctuary when they married, and both were still very much alive. But she had helped comfort cousins that hadn’t been so lucky, when they learned that their mother or father wasn’t coming home.

Then she reached the roof, what was left of it. The Hoplites’ missiles had blown huge chunks out of the opposite edge, along with the story beneath it, both giving the Tarantulas that the Wraiths had dropped easy to the building’s interior. Then her uncle’s tornados had ripped into the hovering Wraiths and while most of debris from the flyers smashing together had been scattered across the new woods behind the building, several of the wrecks had dropped straight down. In spite of the way her Veil made everything look hazy and washed out, the damage was impressive.

She ignored several Tarantulas that had been damaged by falling debris, to the point that they could only twitch or — in the case of one that had all the legs on one side destroyed — drag around in a circle. They could probably still shoot if they had a target, though, and certainly could communicate with other robots, so she was careful not to disturb any of the debris as she crept to the edge of one of the holes and looked down.

Nothing but rubble, and several dead bodies — based on the amount of blood spread around slowing being diluted by the soft rain and the fact that she couldn’t determine _how many_ bodies, or even the sex of the corpses, probably killed by the missile strikes rather than the airlifted Tarantulas. They must have been at the windows when the missile hit. She sat back for a moment, fighting to keep down her last meal, then crept over to the next massive hole — the same story. At least the Veil was making everything hazy, dimming the edges.

The view wavered, and Jofrithr realized she was hyperventilating to the point of going lightheaded. She sat back again and fought her breathing under control, glancing around. None of the robots on the roof seemed to have heard her, or if they had, hadn’t recognized what they were hearing, and the Veil was actually holding. Good. _I can do this. I can do this. I can_ do _this!_ The sound of shooting from below was actually getting louder, things were heating up. She had to move.

Making sure her rifle was safetied, she slung it over her shoulder and moved around the broken edge of the roof to where a metal girder, part of the building’s frame, extended out over the exposed room below. She edged out along the girder, stepped off, dropped, caught the girder to stop her fall, hung for a second, lightly dropped to the floor below ... and pinwheeled her arms as she fought to stay on her feet. For a long, terror-filled second she hung on the edge of collapse before finally recovering her balance, standing straddle-legged as she waited in frozen silence to see if any robots might have been left behind to hear her. Nothing. Sighing with relief, she swung her rifle off her shoulder, clicked off the safety, glanced down ...and almost ended up on the floor again as the smell hit her. She fought her rising nausea as she looked around, then froze at the sight of half an upper torso, one arm and a head ... with a face she recognized. Not anyone she knew, really, but a stranger that had had a kind word for a too-young soldier trying to hide her nerves as they snuck through the ruined city toward her first battle. A stranger that wouldn’t be going home to the family he’d told her about. She jackknifed over and finally lost the fight with her rising gorge, barely keeping on her feet as she spattered her last meal onto the slippery blood and viscera she was standing on, that minutes earlier had been another human being.

Finally she straightened and wiped at her mouth, looked around at the charred and shattered room visible in the watery sunlight (carefully not looking down), and a bolt of panic shot through her as it registered just how clear everything was. In her shock she’d lost control and dropped the Veil. She hastily pulled it back around her then froze at the clicking sounds of a moving multi-legged robot came through the doorway.

A moment later the Tarantula itself skittered halfway through the doorway and paused, and Jofrithr held her breath as its optical sensors swept the room. Its built-in guns were pointed straight at her, a split-second burst and she would join the dead whose remains she was standing on. _Please don’t let it see anything please don’t let it see anything please don’t —_ It skittered into the room far enough to turn around, and left the way it had come.

Jofrithr slowly blew out her lungful of air and realized she was shaking like a leaf. She closed her eyes and fought for control. _Come on, girl, people need you!_ She opened her eyes again as the shakes eased off to shivers. _Okay, time to move._ She glanced down at the floor and up again, then slowly eased forward toward the doorway as she kept her gaze at eye level, feeling with her feet and guiding herself with the memory of that split-second look.

/\

If Aegis hadn’t been headed straight into an almost certainly hostile situation, she would have been grumbling to herself as she bounced up the side of the building. (When it came to leaping she couldn’t yet match Ranma’s height, but was using balconies and window sills for intermediate hops ... a knack she’d picked up after a few embarrassing attempts when she’d pushed herself _away_ from the building, and Ranma had to catch her. Though the rain-slicked surfaces was making things interesting.)

She could understand a fourteen-year-old wanting to charge into battle — at that age, two years before she first met Ranma, she had been _insane_ to prove herself in hopes that her father would start to take her training seriously. But what had _Haruna_ been thinking? If she’d been thinking at all — when Aegis had asked older-Mercury just that question when she’d been given her new mission to find and protect Jofrithr (after getting her unconscious lover to safety, of course), the image in the tiny view screen of Ranma’s communicator had just rolled her eyes and said a single word: “Saotomes.” Aegis wasn’t sure what to think of that. No, actually, that wasn’t true, not after years of coming to know Ranma, both his — and still her — insistence that she could accomplish anything she set her mind to, and the willingness to help anyone in need that the self-confidence that sometimes shaded into bravado often hid. Yes, Aegis could easily imagine Ranma doing exactly what Haruna had apparently waved Jofrithr into without a second thought, expecting the younger girl to be the same. She just had trouble imagining _a whole family_ of Ranmas — _multiple generations_.

But Jofrithr wasn’t a Saotome, and Aegis was wishing with all her heart that she hadn’t acted like one. A battlefield was no place for _adults_ , much less a child.

Then she leaped one last time to the final story, to land on the edge of the floor exposed by a Hoplite missile, shield and lifesword at the ready, and gagged at the stench. _Please, please, please don’t her have come this way!_ she prayed as her eyes swept the room. This was almost as bad as the dimensional tunnel Vanguard had held, when the Confederacy invaded (she suspected that tunnel would always be her standard of judgment for massacres — at least she _hoped_ she’d never see or smell anything worse).

There were no robots, but she saw a trail of blood-red footprints that led through the doorway into the hallway beyond, and her shoulders slumped. _Maybe this world’s Kasumi can sit with her at night for awhile, hold her when her nightmares wake her up._ That was what her Kasumi had done for her after their mother’s death, and she couldn’t imagine that the decades could have changed her sister that much —

Gunfire erupted, rising above the sounds of combat already filling the building, close. Maybe her floor, or one below. She raced from the room, as silently as she could, following the trail of bloody footprints.

/\

Jofrithr was hyperventilating again. It had been the work of a few moments to catch up with the Tarantula that had peeked at the abattoir she’d dropped into. The wait for a particularly loud outbreak of shooting below to mask her own fire into the robot’s back had taken longer (and been nerve-wracking), but the timing had worked — it never knew she was there before it ‘died’. But it turned out that that had been because it was the only robot on the top floor, she hadn’t been so lucky one floor down when she took down the Tarantula guarding the office window that opened up on the fire escape, that she had snuck past on her way up. And now the hunt was on.

What was driving her crazy was that it _was_ a hunt. Sure, the Tarantula that had responded fast enough to trap her in the room where she’d taken down the guard had used what one old hand, an American Marine trapped on the island when the Zonemind had gone to war, had called ‘spray and pray’ (along with firm instructions to _never_ use it, no situation was bad enough to waste ammo like that — not that she believed him anymore, not after today). And the random fire sweeping the room had come within a hair’s breadth of actually tagging her before her own not much less controlled burst had dropped it. She’d taken a chance and, uncaring how much noise she was making, had run right over the second Tarantula without making sure it was finished, and her recklessness had gotten her out of the room, across the hall, and into what must have been a conference or class room — all long wooden tables and chairs with rotted fabric facing a low stage and speaker’s podium, everything coated with dirt and debris — before more showed up, but in spite of her Veil the second responders were somehow _following_ her!

And while the nearest windows only had some jagged pieces of glass left in the frames so she could maybe through one without being noticed, they were on the front of the building and so had no fire escape.

She slowly moved along one wall, moving as quietly as she could as the three (four? five?) Tarantulas that had followed her into the room pushed aside and knocked over long tables and chairs — they seemed to be following the path she had taken when she had first burst into the room, over tables into the middle before moving over to the outside wall. Rising panic was eroding her hold on her Veil.

The lead Tarantula reached the middle of the room, turned toward the outside wall and opened fire, bits of plaster, wood and fabric splashing into the room from tables, chairs and the sections of wall between the windows as it shifted to sweep along the wall away from Jofrithr. Then the Tarantula directly behind it followed suit, except it swept its fire along the wall _toward_ her.

Jofrithr’s shriek rose over the thundering gunfire and she dropped, the world snapping into clear focus as her control finally failed and the Veil popped like a soap bubble. She rolled under the table in front of her, clutching her rifle, then scuttled across under the next row, out the other side — no Tarantula in sight along the narrow aisle between rows to the central walkway. Ignoring the sound of tables and chairs being knocked aside as the Tarantulas bulldozed their way toward where she’d been, she scurried down the narrow space at a crouch until she was halfway to the end of the row, back toward the middle of the room. There, she dropped to all fours and scurried under row after row, pushing chairs out of her way with one hand and the other clutching her rifle as she made her way back toward the door to the corridor she’d run in through just a few minutes earlier.

Almost there, she leaped to her feet, sprang to the top of the table nearest her, and ran along it, ignoring the sting of wood splinters peppering the back of her legs from the bullets blowing holes in the table behind her as she returned fire, this time remembering to use short burst. One down ... two ... the third had somehow tipped itself on its back, by the time it righted itself she’d be gone but she shot it anyway ... she hit the end of the table and leaped across the aisle to the next ... four ... the chattering gunfire filling the room cut off as her rifle’s clip ran dry but there was no five ... she’d done it!

She turned toward the doorway, popping the clip free and catching it as it dropped ... and froze at the sight of a _fifth_ man-sized Tarantula crouching in the doorway, angled up and swinging its own built-in rifle toward her. Everything went silent as her vision narrowed on the robot suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion, the same as the clip she’d dropped as she desperately, _slowly_ scrabbled at her pouch for a fresh clip ... tried to force herself to dive out of the way....

And a screaming banshee of a raven-haired girl in a filthy, oil-soaked, red, white and blue mini-skirted sailor suit came flipping over the Tarantula and landed in front of Jofrithr facing the robot, the robot’s gunfire hammering into a braced glowing-translucent shield. The newcomer shrieked again as she dove forward, thrusting a straight longsword of the same glowing energy to sink deep straight into the Tarantula. The sword vanished as the robot collapsed and reappeared in her hand as she took several steps back, braced for more combat, but the Tarantula simply twitched, the occasional spark jumping from where she had stabbed it. Finally, she leaped up onto the long table on which Jofrithr was standing — where both girls were out of the line of fire of the last defunct attacker — and turned to the Morisato.

In Jofrithr’s shellshocked state it took her a moment to recognize the other girl as one of the two she had followed earlier. _Right, Akane_. Then it hit her — she was going to live, after all. The world went surreal even without her Veil in place, she felt as if she was floating off the table ... and suddenly Aegis was hugging her, keeping her upright.

“Easy, there, just sit down. You’ve had quite a shock,” Aegis murmured, glancing toward the doorway before helping Jofrithr ease down to sit on top of their table. The younger girl put her head down between her knees and _shook_ as Aegis rubbed her back and murmured assurances while keeping an eye on the doorway.

Finally her shaking eased, and Jofrithr laughed bitterly. “And here I thought I would be the big hero, save everyone by taking the robots from behind!” She was shocked when Aegis just laughed softly.

“It didn’t quite work out like you planned, did it?” the sort-of Senshi replied. “That’s happened to me more times than I like to think. You just have to roll with it. Besides, you’ve certainly provided a distraction. Don’t forget these things are linked ... what was the word ... wirelessly?”

Jofrithr nodded, surprised. _Maybe they really_ are _from the past_ , she thought, remembering Endymion’s update before the attack

Aegis continued, “Between the two of us I think we’ve cleared out all the guards on this level, and the rest of the robots will know it. I imagine some have turned around and are making their way back up ... cautiously. And _that’s_ a good reason to be on our way, let’s go.” She hopped down from the table and offered Jofrithr a hand, which the still-shaky Morisato ignored as she clambered down.

Jofrithr picked up her rifle from the floor where she’d dropped it (blushing as she realized she could remember letting go of her only effective weapon), fished another clip out of her pouch and slapped it home, and grabbed the empty clip and stuck it in the other pouch she wore for just that. (The Resistance had nowhere enough resources that its fighters could afford to leave empty clips lying around — they even picked up empty shells, on those few times they had the opportunity, for reloading.)

“So how are we doing this?” she asked, glancing around once more as she spoke. This room had been where she’d had her first real firefight. And she may have needed rescuing in the end but thinking back, she hadn’t really done all that badly before that last, near-fatal mistake. And looking over this room helped keep away the memories of the abattoir she’d had to jump down into. Which reminded her ... “Somehow the flatscans are tracking me even with my Veil, I don’t know how.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?” Jofrithr hastily looked herself over. Sure enough, she found a furrow from a bullet across one hip, still-oozing blood staining her shorts (the same near rags everyone else wore rather than what she’d grown up with, to keep her from standing out) and streaking her leg, the second Tarantula in the room with the fire escape had come closer than she’d thought ... and yes, now that she looked closer along the tables she had run across she could see bloody partial footprints. Her Veil might keep _her_ out of sight, along with anyone else close to her that she chose when she wrapped it around herself, but it wouldn’t hide the prints she left behind. She might as well have been sending up flares.

“Not that they might not have been able to follow you even if you weren’t,” Aegis added, frowning as she looked around even as she pulled a small first aid kit out of empty air. “This place is filthy, they might have been able to follow your tracks in the dirt even without the blood. Still, once we get that scratch bound up you can use your mojo to hide while I take the lead.”

“No, my Veil can cover us both,” Jofrithr asserted, then grimaced as Aegis tightened the bandage she was wrapping around her leg and glanced toward the windows. “But it won’t keep the flatscans from noticing a door opening, maybe the windows — ?” She froze, her face going pale.

At the sudden break in conversation Aegis’s eyes shot up from tying off the bandage to Jofrithr’s face, then whirled around to face the windows just in time to see a Wraith flip over and drop toward the ground as a massive blood-red Moko Takabisha from below slammed into one stubby wing’s turbo. She assumed it was from this dimension’s Ranma, though the way it was fueled by anger or hatred was distantly disturbing — ‘distantly’ because her attention was focused on the missile the Wraith had launched just before being blown out of the sky, that was streaking straight toward them.

She shouted, “Get down!” as her eyes flashed about the room. The tables were all longwise to the windows, she couldn’t flip one over for cover — she would just have to hope that her shield would hold even against even that, though the memories of the missile strike against the room she and Vanguard had been defending earlier and the abattoir she’d dropped into from the roof said otherwise.

Jofrithr had slid off the table and was dropping to her knees. Aegis crouched down beside her, let her lifesword vanish, and held up both arms to brace a single, square shield, so thick she would have barely been able to make out anything through it even if the intense light shining from it hadn’t made that impossible. She held her breath and closed her eyes to focus on her center, she could _not_ lose her hold on that now —

“Dead scream.” At the murmured phrase a ball of blazing purple light flash over Aegis and out the window to smash head-on into the oncoming missile. The resulting explosion seemed to shake the building but only light shrapnel came through the window to pepper her shield, most must have been blown back ... away from the building and its defenders.

Aegis peeked over the edge of her shield, and when she didn’t see a second missile on its way — or a Wraith to launch it — she sighed with relief and rose from her crouch as she morphed her shield back into its usual Western knight’s shield and reformed her lifesword. She turned around, and as she expected she found the emerald-haired Pluto in her black-trimmed sailor fuku. What she didn’t expect was Jofrithr’s response.

“Auntie Set-chan!”

_Auntie?_

/\

Pluto sighed with relief as she rose from her crouch. She’d ducked down as soon as she’d fired off her Dead Scream, of course — her Senshi healing would have soon taken care of any minor wounds what little shrapnel reached them would have inflicted, but that didn’t mean that multiple tiny piercings of red-hot metal was fun. Still, most of the relief making her light-headed was because ... “Auntie Set-chan!” ... because _this_ time she had been able to move fast enough.

She flickered to the Time Gates and back, and braced herself just in time as she suddenly found her arms full with an adopted niece shaking with heavy, gasping sobs. She hugged the girl tight with one arm as the other hand rose to gently stroke Jofrithr’s hair. She had held children — other nieces and nephews — mourning the loss of their parents, but _this_ time she wouldn’t have to tell people she’d helped raise of the loss of their child. Not have to tell Belldandy of another child or grandchild dead and moved on beyond her. All thanks to all-too-familiar strangers that had joined a fight that wasn’t theirs, and had narrowed the possible — almost inevitable — Morisato losses down to a single one that she could _step_ in and save. It was selfish, she knew — there would be other families mourning the day’s losses — but she couldn’t help it. She could feel her own eyes prickling with happy tears as she looked up at a softly smiling Aegis standing nearby and silently mouthed ‘thank you’.

Aegis nodded acknowledgement, her own eyes suspiciously bright, and turned her attention to the doorway ... both to guard and to give them as much privacy as possible. After several minutes passed she reluctantly murmured, “We really should get moving before more robots show up.”

Pluto shook her head before pressing her cheek against Jofrithr’s hair. “No need to worry,” she replied. “By this point the Tokyo Zonemind is calling all the shots, and its attention is on the more heavily defended lower floors with their abundance of more high-powered individuals. It’s posted guards on the stairwells and windows open to the fire escape, and left it at that.”

Aegis accepted Pluto’s assessment — it was _Pluto_ , after all — with a sigh. “In that case, I’d better take the express route down and rejoin the _fun_ ,” she said with a shudder, nodding toward the window.

Pluto shook her head again, slightly, feeling Jofrithr’s hair rub against her cheek. “Wait. In a few minutes either it’ll all be over, or you can make a charge down the stairwell to provide a distraction while we try to exfiltrate everyone able to move or be moved through Jupiter’s new forest.”

Aegis hesitated for a long moment, then finally nodded. “Okay.” After a moment’s pause, she asked, “Does your niece have anyone she can sleep with? After almost dying and what we came through getting here she’ll need it.” She shuddered as she remembered the walls spattered with blood and worse in the room the missile had struck, she knew she’d be revisiting it in her dreams ... though it might be an improvement over the dreams of ordering ... or _not_ ordering ... Kuno’s death. Tatewaki’s, rather — after his sacrifice he deserved it. Yes, she was going to be _very_ grateful to be sharing a bed with Ranma, beyond the obvious.

“Jofrithr’s an adopted niece, sort of, and she’ll be fine, eventually,” Pluto replied. She smiled fondly down at her still-crying armful. “I’ll take her home when we’re done, her Grandmother Belldandy can out-Kasumi Kasumi.”

“Really?” Aegis glanced over at the Senshi for a moment before returning her attention to the doorway. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“She’s older.” _By a rather considerable margin._ “She’s had more time to practice.” Pluto could feel herself growing more and more tense with every moment. It was taking too long. Or not _too_ long, not yet, but every passing second was getting closer to that point. Closing her eyes, she sent a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, for two good friends she hadn’t seen in decades, before their few minutes. _Please, let me have the chance to meet them again._

/oOo\

It had been a struggle to undo the straps to Artemis’s harness with teeth and claws, and Luna was bleeding from one tooth she’d broken in the process, but it was _finally_ done. At least with the room sealed off they hadn’t had to worry about Artemis’s renewed demonstration of Mau profanity (and even Luna’s on occasion) being overheard by more security robots. Now they’d retraced their route through the ventilation system back to the server room, with Luna praying the entire way that the security robot parked there had moved on.

This time, her prayers went unanswered. She heard Artemis sigh softly, just before he leaped down to the floor. She didn’t move forward to see — they didn’t want the robot to know she was there, and especially didn’t want it catching a hint of her harness — but she heard her husband yowl out a challenge in perfect imitation of a feral housecat, followed a few seconds later by a rumble of the robot’s wheels so faint that it would have been inaudible without the complete silence of the server room. It had worked. She said another little prayer for her husband’s safety, hoping this one would get a better answer than the last, and ignored the tension twisting in her gut at how _long_ they were taking as she settled down to wait. It had to be long enough that the robot wouldn’t be able to get back in time even if it somehow detected her presence behind it ... or if the Tokyo Zonemind wasn’t as distracted as they hoped, but distracted enough that she’d be out of the anti-personnel defenses’ zones before it could respond.

Finally, the black seeming-cat crept forward and peeked over the edge down into the room below ... nothing, the robot was gone. Not a sound, except for the faint hum of the servers’ cooling fans. She was clear.

She crouched, and leaped out into the room as far as she could, grunted when she landed as her legs absorbed the extra weight of harness and device attached, then raced across the floor (no point in going slow, not with Zonemind’s computer-driven reaction speed) and leaped up onto the desk still located where the Resistance’s informant had reported it had been. And it still had the keyboard and monitor as well. _Of course it does! And they’ll still work, too. If they weren’t there or didn’t work, Pluto would have told us._ But that thought didn’t keep her from going limp with relief when she reached out a paw to push the power button and the screen lit up.

Behind Luna, the room lit up with anti-personnel lasers as they flashed to life, one set springing from the walls to form a red lattice four or five feet above the floor and another set projecting from the ceiling in blue lines burning random patterns in the floor. One blue beam sliced across the chair that any human using the keyboard and monitor would have been seated in, catching it on fire. The Mau fought to ignore the defenses — she was perfectly safe, they couldn’t reach her — and struggled to flip a toggle at the base of her throat with one paw, using some of the words in her native language that Artemis had reminded her of earlier when she tore off one of her claws in the process.

The toggle _finally_ clicked over and Luna crouched as a telescoping arm with a flash drive attached to the tip slowly extended, then stiffened when she heard the distant rumble of wheels and whining engine, a _thud_ as something ran into a wall. A robot was on its way. _Okay, girl, you’re only going to get one chance at this, get it right!_ Lying practically flat, she shuffled forward. She jerked once when the first claymore exploded, sending ball bearings sleeting across the room, but it wasn’t pointed toward the desk — and the servers adjacent to it — and it was loaded with ball bearing designed to shatter against the walls rather than ricochet. All it could do was scare her, and she ignored the follow-on explosions as she carefully lined up the flash drive with an open port built into the edge of the monitor, pushed ... and the flash drive clicked into place. She froze in place as lines of script began scrolling down the monitor’s screen. She could _not_ move until the flash drive had finished its task. She just hoped it would be done before the robot arrived, with the room’s anti-personnel defenses there would be no Pluto stepping in to save the day.

/\

_The Tokyo Zonemind had never been so focused on a single task. It had followed the data being sent in by the force besieging the rebels that had raided its central compound and were new desperately defending an office building, and it had grown simultaneously excited and worried (at least, what passed for excited and worried for an Artificial Intelligence) — excited as the numbers of reported high-powered rebels under siege climbed, and worried as the number of reported casualties among its own forces also climbed. The losses were made even worse by the lack of supervisor robots, pulled out to act as couriers while wireless communications were being jammed and not yet returned to their proper places._

_In the end, it stepped in to take direct control of its assaulting army ..._ all _of its assaulting army. The strain on its operating resources were intense and it couldn’t leave the supervising of all the remainder of Zone Tokyo to local supervisor robots and Overseer mainframes for long, but the massacre of the rebels wouldn’t_ take _long — not with its guidance providing coordination and forcing an unrelenting assault. If after the battle every robot in the assault had to be scrapped, it would be worth it if only those anomalous, much too powerful biologics were_ dead _. The rebels couldn’t collect the pieces of their dead scattered over the battlefield and build new units out of the scrap if not outright repair them, after all._

_So when the alert registered of an anomalous sound in the central server room, it was automatically diverted to a queue for the Zonemind to review after it finished the battle and a call was sent out to one of the security drones patrolling the building. Nor was the Zonemind alerted when a feral cat jumped down into the server room, then fled the room with the security drone in hot pursuit when the robot’s limited calculating capacity added a tentative linking of the cat with the anomalous sound to its pest control subroutine. But the activation of the server room’s manual interface had the Zonemind’s instant attention._

_It instantly instructed the Wraiths that it had been lining up for a follow-up strike against the three biologics in the building’s upper stories to assume a circling pattern at a safe distance — they were the last Wraiths immediately available — and dropped its links with them to devote that capacity to the low-light cameras in a server room lit only by the LED lights of the servers that made up the Zonemind’s actual physical location. Those and the anti-personnel lasers that had automatically activated when the manual interface had been activated without authorization._

_What it found caused the Zonemind to instantly drop the rest of its links to the assault force’s robots and focus everything on its headquarters building — a cat crouched on the desk in front of the monitor for the manual interface, wearing a harness of some sort, a tiny motor attached to the harness extending a telescoping arm with a flash drive attached to the tip. The need to remove the monitor and keyboard had never even registered with the A.I., the odds of any biologic sneaking (much less fighting) its way into the server room and surviving the anti-personnel defenses were much too low for the apparent waste of resources for the task to even be considered. Certainly, the Zonemind had never estimated the odds of the rebels somehow training a cat to perform the task for them. And how had it even gotten there!?_

_It split its operating resources to simultaneously view the current feeds of the security cameras within the building (most of those outside the building having been destroyed during or immediately after the rebel assault, a fact it flagged), review what they had recorded since the beginning of the rebel assault on the compound, take control of the security drones throughout the building and view their own visual feeds even as it ordered the one closest to break off its pursuit of a feral housecat and head to the server room, consider its options for dealing with the cat with the flash drive, and to isolate the manual interface from the rest of its systems._

_It located one point in the security footage that_ two _cats had transferred between different sections of the ventilation system, the black cat with the flash drive and a white cat with a_ blowtorch _to explain how they had gotten through the grills. The same white cat the security drone had been chasing, though now without the blowtorch. Then another flag popped up, more footage from around installations throughout Zone Tokyo and over years of coverage, all showing white and black feral cats, often together but sometimes alone, all with the same quarter moon patterns on their foreheads when those locations weren’t obscured by dirt. The Zonemind instantly ordered all the security drones except the one headed for the server room to hunt down and capture the second cat. More study was_ definitely _warranted._

 _Simultaneously, it determined that its options for dealing with the server room intruder in advance of the security drone’s arrival were minimal. The defenses had been set up so that they didn’t risk damage to the servers, after all, and the manual interface fell within the same uncovered zone ... so long as the user was_ much _smaller than the usual human, at least child-sized. Not that there was any reason for concern, the interface was sealed off — but that was no reason to use all the interventions available before the security drone arrived and biologics were easily startled, perhaps to the point of bounding into the lasers’ range, so it created a subroutine to sequentially set off the claymore mines in the walls. The only reaction to the cat to the sudden thunder was a slight jerk before it again shuffled forward, the flash drive was pushed into its port ... and the Tokyo Zonemind abruptly found itself fighting for its life as unknown code flooded into its systems, subverting control and cutting off its links to the outside._

/oOo\

Sailor Mercury sighed and rubbed at tired eyes before refocusing on the three-dimensional holographic map of the building she’d created with the Mercury Computer sitting in her cross-legged lap. While she hadn’t been pulling the consecutive all-nighters that her Senshi form endurance allowed before the Rise of the Machines —since Pluto had stopped by long enough to inform them that the Tokyo Zonemind could track their magical signatures they’d transformed only just before combat and reverted as soon as the fight was over — she _had_ been pushing the limits of her capabilities to control her icy-cold fog. The strain of maintaining a fogbank for as long as she had, extensive enough to surround the building they’d forted up in for blocks around with a hole in the middle so the defenders could see the advancing robots when they got close enough for effective return fire, had been a considerable strain.

That fog had been more useful than usual — a power that effectively blinded everyone but her without blocking radar or sonar wasn’t something raiders usually made much use of — but once the Tarantulas reached the building and were able to send visual feeds to the Hoplites hanging back in the fog for targeting the fog’s usefulness had dropped considerably, leaving only her ability to sense the movement of anything that disturbed it as an advantage. Even that was rendered mostly useless by the robots’ blunt frontal assault, and the Wraiths coming almost straight down through the hole in her fog to drop Tarantulas on the roof. In the end, she’d allowed the fog to thin to a light mist as soon as Ranma’s ad hoc squad had pushed through the Tarantulas to destroy the Hoplites and their missiles.

She’d actually considered trying to saturate the building with the same light mist, to see if she could keep her ability to sense shape and movement without interfering with her people’s ability to see, but reluctantly rejected the thought as too dangerous with yet another curse for the decades she’d wasted before the Rise. She and the rest of the Senshi _could_ have spent that time training and studying, preparing themselves for this struggle, but instead they had mostly spent those decades in a haze of depression as they’d watched the world they’d fought and even died for to protect tear itself apart in an orgy of blood and death, and then the Zoneminds awoke and it was too late. Experimenting with that sort of thing with lives on the line was a _bad_ idea, for the same reason agriculture had taken so many centuries to improve — when a single mistake could kill everyone you knew, you stuck to what you knew worked. Though her light mist seemed to be working just fine as a form of sonar, if not as ‘sharp’ as her thicker mists — not that it was helping much with the main fight, there she was reduced to scanning for power sources and judging the type and number of robots from the strength and density of the returns.

Her gaze sharpened as she noticed particularly thick concentrations making a rush for both corners simultaneously with another group pushing down the central and a general push straight at the center ground floor where the Hoplites’ missile strikes had been concentrated before Ranma had destroyed their launchers. She hesitated for a moment, then hit a speed dial button on her communicator for what was usually Venus’s com. “Daiki, they’re making a rush for your corner!” she announced, barely waited long enough for an acknowledgment before disconnecting. He would pass the word to Morisato Hallbera, several Saotomes and the Venuses. She hit a second button for Ranma’s com. “Shoko —” She broke off when the power signals at the opposite corner began rapidly vanishing one after another. Ranma was being his ... or was it currently her? ... lethally effective self, supported by several more of his descendents. “Never mind.” She disconnected and found herself holding her breath as the tide of signals in the center surged up against the building, pushing forward faster than Mars could annihilate them. A few actually made it into the building through a door and several windows, where Mars couldn’t take them down — no point risking a fire doing the Zonemind’s work for it — only for their signals to vanish almost as soon as they made it in. The only powered defenders she was picking up there besides Mars was Jupiter and her lightning — the younger one, the older Jupiter was still unconscious from the strain of creating the forest, lying in their ad hoc infirmary next to Mercury’s younger counterpart exhausted to the point of collapse — and the younger Endymion with his sword and shield, but several of the Morisatos had to be there. The Mercury Computer had never been able to detect any of that extended family, but the presumed Tarantulas were disappearing too fast for anything else.

After a long minute she relaxed. In spite of the vastly improved coordination that indicated the plan was working — that _had_ to be the Tokyo Zonemind taking a personal hand in the fight — the flatscans were being stopped for now. More robots were pushing the assault on the center, by now over the shattered wreckage of their predecessors so thick that they were skittering from the T-intersection to the building without touching the ground, firing as they came, but Mars was holding them for now. But she _had_ to be down to dregs, Mercury couldn’t see how her friend could last much longer and when Mars went down and the Tarantulas swept into the building’s center —

The building seemed to shake from a massive double-explosion, the second less than thirty feet away, and the Mercury Computer blinked a fresh alarm, one that Mercury had set up over a decade before — Dead Scream detected! And yes, there was Pluto’s distinct magic signature on the top floor, the first time she’d picked it up since Pluto had broken her exile to warn them the Tokyo Zonemind could track them, next to the incredibly strong life-sign of another Saotome that Mercury assumed to be Aegis and a normal human signature she would just have to hope was Jofrithr. It looked like the Senshi of Time had _stepped_ in to save the day, but from what?

Mercury reran her computer’s history of the last several minutes at four to one speed, and winced at the clear signal of a Wraith flying an attack run and launching a missile just before Ranma blew it out of the sky. As plain as day and she’d missed it! She cursed herself as she scanned for any other Wraiths farther out. Yes, she was exhausted, and the Zonemind had set up the Wraith’s attack run to avoid her mists, but still —

“Oh, shit!” she swore in English, freezing for a moment as her computer detected the distant signals of another handful of Wraiths lining up for another attack run ... yes, for the upper story again ... and cursed herself again for _another_ ball dropped as she snatched up her communicator. She’d added Aegis to the group listings but didn’t have her or Pluto on speed dial! And the fourteen-year-old Jofrithr wasn’t even on the group listings, she wasn’t supposed to be there at all.... She hit the button for Vanguard’s communicator. _Please please please let Aegis still have it._ No response. Mercury began frantically scrolling through menu after menu, eyes flicking back and forth between her com and computer as the Wraiths began their run, Pluto’s com number had to be in there _somewhere_ ... and suddenly the Wraiths broke off the attack run to soar straight up, well out of the range of anyone on the ground, and began circling in a holding pattern.

For a moment Mercury thought she was going to faint from sheer lightheaded relief, her heart pounding in her chest, the room seeming to rock like a boat as she dropped her head into her hands and sucked in breath after breath she’d been denying herself the last few minutes. But after a moment as she got her breath back and her heart rate dropped to something approaching normal. She had a job to do, and the Zonemind ordering the Wraiths to break off their run was anomalous, what —

Her thoughts seemed to stutter away as the overpowering wave of the Zonemind-controlled horde on her 3-D holographic map suddenly fragmented, breaking apart into multiple small groups, some continuing to fight to advance, other standing in place taking the building under fire, others falling back — all mass coordination had vanished. The Tokyo Zonemind had relinquished all control of the battle ... which meant that something more important than killing the Resistance had come to its attention. The only thing that Mercury could think of that was that important was a pair of Mau advisors, and she wiped away the map to bring up an empty screen hanging in air as the cacophony of battle seemed to fade away, her thoughts focused on constant prayer for two lifelong friends and their mission. _Please_ let the backdoor still be there that one of the original programmers of the supercomputer that had become the Tokyo Zonemind had told her about before he died! Let her friends live....

Then the near constant explosions and rattling gunfire abruptly cut off like a flicked switch, and a single line of text appeared on her screen: ‘ _Edo requesting instructions._ ’


	23. Coming Down from the High

Akane jerked awake at the knock on the door. She lifted her head from where it had been pillowed on a firm breast, then straightened in her seat and blinked her eyes clear of sleep before looking over her lover, smiling at Ranma’s peaceful expression.

Things had gotten ... bizarre ... after the robots had suddenly stopped shooting at them and pulled back. Having all the wounded loaded on board Zonemind-controlled Wraiths that had been trying to kill them just a little earlier and flown directly to the headquarters bunker that had been so carefully hidden for over a decade had been unreal, but it meant that Ranma got stripped out of her filthy uniform, wiped down as best possible with the Resistance’s limited resources, and tucked into a real bed to finish her healing trance, so Akane wasn’t going to complain. By that time the Wraiths had returned to the battlefield to pick up the rest of the fighters and the victory celebration had started, of course, but Akane had chosen to stay by her lover’s bedside and wait for her to wake up. Apparently, the noise of the celebration she could still faintly hear hadn’t been enough to keep the youngest Tendo from crying herself to sleep. It was only when the fighting was over and Ranma had been taken care of that it had finally hit her how close Ranma had come to dying _again_.

The knock sounded again, and Akane rubbed at tear-stained cheeks with one hand. It couldn’t be Hotaru and Usa again, could it? It didn’t seem likely — she’d told them to go ahead and enjoy the party, after all, and their Firefly had been glued to her Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama’s counterparts (or had it been the other way around?). Since they’d left before her breakdown, she hadn’t expected to see them before morning. _Well, only one way to find out._

She called out, “Come on in.” Her eyes widened at the sight of the two women that walked in and closed the door behind them. Though their clothing was worn and badly mismatched (though clean), their hair ragged, they were instantly recognizable. But — _They’re so_ old _!_ she thought as she let go of Ranma’s hand and rose from her chair, straightening the artful rags she was wearing as best she could without thinking. _Of course they’re old, idiot, it’s been over sixty years. I hope_ I _look that good when I’m that old._ Really, Kasumi and Nabiki were in excellent shape for women hitting eighty. Actually, they were in much better shape than their world.

“Is Ranma all right?” a concerned Kasumi asked, looking sharply at the redhead in the bed.

“What? Oh!” Akane wiped at her tear stains again, with both hands this time. “Yeah, Ranma’ll be fine. It’s just, she was almost killed and I hadn’t had time to think about it and it was the _second time_ —” She broke off when she heard her voice rising and closed her eyes, hiding her shaking hands behind her back as she fought to let go of her anger and find her center. She was _not_ the girl that had been constantly feeding her anger to her ki, and she wasn’t going to revert now. She managed to let go of her anger and let it flow through her, leaving her center untouched, and sighed at the wry amusement she was picking up, riding the radiating ki of her sisters’ counterparts. Opening her eyes, she said, “She isn’t going to get any better at that, is she?”

“Our Ranma didn’t,” Nabiki said with a shrug.

Kasumi nodded her agreement, smiling fondly, her eyes unfocused with old memories. She murmured, “Whenever the fight is over something truly important, all thought of possible risk vanishes.”

“True, good thing he has Minako to help yank him back to earth, remind him to look beyond the immediate fight,” Nabiki snarked, nudging Kasumi with an elbow as the older sister blushed.

Then she fell silent as both sisters refocused on Akane, and their ki was flooded with love mixed with loss and longing. Akane’s eyes went misty and she spread her arms, and instantly found herself in a three-way hug as tears flowed down the old women’s cheeks. “Little sis, we missed you so much,” Nabiki choked out. Kasumi, nodded her agreement, unable to speak.

Finally the three broke apart and wiped their eyes clear. Akane looked around, then perched on the bed and reclaimed Ranma’s hand. Kasumi sat on the bed beside her, one arm going around Akane’s waist to pull her against her while Nabiki took the chair. “So,” Akane said brightly as she rested her head on Kasumi’s shoulder, “you two have a _lot_ more to tell me than I do you, what did I miss over the past sixty years? Tell me _all_ about it!”

/oOo\

Setsuna and Jofrithr walked down the Wraith’s ramp into watery sunlight, onto cracked urban asphalt still wet from the recent storm. The street the Wraith was parked on ran in front of what looked like an old Buddhist temple collapsing from years of neglect. Actually, _Setsuna_ walked while a singing Jofrithr staggered, only Setsuna’s arm around her waist and her own hand on the older woman’s shoulder keeping her upright.

Setsuna waited until the manta ray flyer raised its ramp, lifted off and soared away to the fading roar of turbo jets, then nudged Jofrithr into motion toward the cracked, crumbling steps leading up to the temple. Those steps were _not_ going to be fun. “Come on, Jofrithr, just a little further and you’ll be home.”

Breaking off her wavery search for a melody, Jofrithr slurred, “Don’ wanna go home, wanna party. Don’ wanna sleep ... dreams ...”

Setsuna winced at the alcohol-laden breath that hit her in the face. The fourteen-year-old hadn’t exactly had all that much to drink, but she also wasn’t exactly all that big, it was her first experience with alcohol, she had the bandaged furrow in her leg, and her half-goddess heritage didn’t help much. As Setsuna had long since learned from her drinking sessions with Urd, a divine nature wasn’t _that_ much of a defense against getting drunk — at least not without some preparation beforehand that Urd rarely used, claiming it defeated the point of drinking. “No need to be afraid of sleep,” she replied. She kept her eyes focused down on the stairs rising in front of them. One step at a time. She briefly considered just picking Jothrifr and carrying her up the stairs, but while she wasn’t _drunk_ she’d had a few herself and she wasn’t in her Senshi form. “That’s why we’re —”

A pair of sandaled feet stepped down into her angle of vision, and Setsuna looked up as Urd and Belldandy took the last few steps down to join her, a concerned expression on their tattooed faces. Technically they weren’t supposed to be outside of Sanctuary’s wards, to reduce the temptation to intervene in humanity’s scattershot war with the Zoneminds, but since they’d only left Sanctuary to help one of their own back inside Setsuna didn’t think the Almighty would mind.

The platinum-blonde Norn of the Past scooped her drunken niece up in her arms and turned to remount the steps with Setsuna and Belldandy behind her. Belldandy asked, “Is she injured?”

“Just a scratch,” Setsuna replied. “But it got pretty ugly and naturally she disobeyed orders to break off and head for the rallying point. She saw some of the worst of it, and she’s only fourteen. I thought she needed to be home with you and her mother before she dreams.”

From a few steps higher Urd harshly asked, “And did you think she needed to get drunk as well?”

“No.” Setsuna stumbled slightly on one particularly worn step, and Belldandy caught her arm, then slid her own arm around her friend’s waist. “When the victory celebration started I lost track of her for a few minutes ... okay, a few hours ... and she was drunk when I finally thought to look for her again. The idiots passing around the not-to-be-named alcohol” — the rotgut the rebels had been distilling from whatever wasn’t fit to eat actually had plenty of names, but none that Setsuna was willing to use in front of Belldandy — “thought that if she was old enough to fight she was old enough to drink.”

“And what were you doing during those ‘few hours’?”

Unlike her sister, Belldandy was her usual serene self, but Setsuna wilted where she’d taken Urd in stride. “I was reconnecting with old friends and lost track of time, I’m sorry,” she mumbled, blushing with shame.

“No, I am the one who should be sorry.” The two immortals reached the top of the steps and followed Urd through the wards onto the trimmed lawn around the fully maintained temple that those wards hid, and Belldandy stopped and let go of Setsuna. Stepping to the side, she turned to face her old friend. “It is as I told you when you left for this battle, you have your own duties that take precedence over playing guardian angel. And I know you’ve missed your friends these six decades, and are overjoyed that they have all survived.”

“Maybe, but that’s no excuse. After all, I _am_ ‘Auntie Set-chan’,” Setsuna replied. “Your people are my people as well, as much as my responsibilities allow.”

“Thank you for that.” Belldandy hesitated, then asked, “And how are the rest of our people?”

“Alive. Jofrithr was the most at risk, and Akane kept her alive long enough for me to step in. Mostly, minor wounds, scrapes, strains and sprains. Nobuyoki took a shot to the knee that we won’t be able to fix for a few years, Vefreyja has a badly broken arm that she’ll be a few months recovering full use of — I’ll bring them both home later, they insisted on staying for the celebration in spite of the pain.”

She broke off for a moment, turning to gaze wistfully at the temple that had been home for over half a century. Sixty-three years wasn’t much compared to her five millennia, but it had been a time of healing and refuge, love and family. “I won’t be back, not often,” she murmured. “Now that we have Edo on our side, we’re going to be busy turning Japan into a hidden refuge and taking the fight to the other Zoneminds.”

“I know,” Belldandy replied. “And Keiichi doesn’t have many more months left. Now that our descendants’ future is secure he will be coming home to stay. Sanctuary will no longer be truly needed once he is gone and the last of the grandchildren are grown, so my time here ... and my sisters ... will also be over.” Setuna’s head whipped around, and Belldandy smiled softly at her stricken expression. She reached up to place a silencing finger against her friend’s lips. “Do not mourn. Life is change, but your memories of our time here together will always be yours. Go, retake the world, rebuild the family you lost. We will meet again, in the centuries to come. Often, I promise — and you know about divine promises.”

Setsuna nodded, then abruptly pulled Belldandy into a fierce hug. “I’ll say goodbye to everyone when I bring Vefreyja and Nobuyoki home,” she whispered. She felt Belldandy nod, silken earth-shaded hair brushing against her cheek, and the two simply stood for a time in companionable silence until Setsuna finally, reluctantly broke the embrace. Without a word, she turned and strode through the wards, back to the head of the stairs down to the street. She paused for a moment, breathing deep, taking in the rain-cleaned air as she looked over the ruined city that in less than a century would be Crystal Tokyo, then _stepped_ away.

/oOo\

Usagi and Serenity flopped down next to each other on Serenity’s bed, giggling at the antics of the party they had just left. The party was breaking up a bit as the heavy hitters and the lightweights collapsed under their load of booze, and the more conversationally inclined sought out quiet nooks. Or at least _more_ quiet nooks, as the faint beat of music came through the closed door from the main meeting room, where the folding chairs and tables had been stacked against the walls so old-timers could try to teach the younger set half-remembered dance moves. Neither teachers nor students were helped by the booze they’d been drinking, and the results had to be seen to be believed. Fortunately, Mercury had the bunker’s security cameras feeding directly to her computer. This was _one_ party that would be immortalized for the ages, and was far from the only event whose footage Mercury had stored away in computer memory. Serenity suspected that future historians were going to _worship_ Mercury and her computer.

Still, there was no more private place in the entire headquarters bunker than Serenity and Endymion’s private quarters. The only one likely to disturb them was her husband, and he was explaining to his fascinated counterpart the various tricks he’d come up with for his earth-sensing and -control powers. And Serenity had something _very_ important to ask Usagi, it was why she had been encouraging her younger self to drink the rotgut being passed around. At least, she’d ask once she finally worked up the courage. But not yet.

Their giggles finally eased off and the two lay there on the worn, not-too-clean blankets for awhile in companionable silence. Finally, Usagi asked, “So now that you have your own Zonemind on your side, what are you going to do next?”

“Well, for the next few years we’ll be consolidating,” Serenity replied, “making sure the other Zoneminds don’t suspect anything while we secure our position, make sure we can feed everyone, set aside resources for refugees. No need to spend extra effort infiltrating the other Zones, the Tokyo Zonemind was already pushing that as hard as it reasonably could and Edo will continue doing the same. Mercury is going to be taking everything she has on her computer on the rejuvenation techniques we had in the Moon Queendom and use or invent the modern technology we need to do rejuvenations here and now — that’ll do wonders for our available manpower, both by de-aging the older population and restoring those crippled to full capabilities.

“After that ... we haven’t decided, yet, whether we should focus on Zone Washington or Zone Mexico City. I’m leaning toward Zone Mexico City ... Zone Washington as the biggest population, but we can override the brainwashing techniques that Zonemind uses to control its genetically-manipulated creations while most of the humans serving the Washington Zonemind actually believe they are the ones in control and I don’t want a civil war between well-meaning human factions ... but we have a few years to talk things through before I have to make a decision.”

“Not Zone China, or whatever?” Usagi questioned. “It _is_ right next door.”

“Zone Beijing, and that’s partly why we’re avoiding it — if our efforts are detected, the neighboring Zoneminds will be the more immediate suspects. We’ll be helping that assumption, if we can, get the Zoneminds fighting amongst themselves. Besides, the Mexico City Zonemind’s drive to eliminate all biological life and replace it with tech-based life instead, and Zone Denver’s experimentation with nanotech are more immediately dangerous.

“But this is supposed to be a celebration, let’s talk about something happier, like ... I don’t think I’ve seen Haruka and Michiru this happy in decades,” Serenity mused. “Hotaru’s death hit them _really_ hard, I think years would go by without ever seeing them smile. And first having to hide their relationship because the Traditionalists rose to power and pushed marriage and lots of babies as every woman’s duty to drive up the birth rate, followed by losing everything they’d managed to build during the collapse leading to the Rise of the Machines ...” She hiccupped (and hardly needed to fake it — she’d been drinking a bit herself, though she had more experience). “So have they asked yet if Hotaru can visit on her birthday?”

“Nope, don’t need to. Our Firefly’s already asked,” Usagi replied. “She’s gonna tell ‘em she can before the party’s over. Think we’ll hear their happy shouts in here?” She suddenly started giggling.

Serenity frowned and turned her head to look at Usagi. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

Usagi fought her giggles under control and said, “Hotaru and Usa are gonna be adding _years_ to their lives. They’ll be spending, like, a week here every year ‘round Hotaru’s birthday, and a week in the 30th century for Usa’s birthday and every Christmas ... they’ll be adding practically a month every year in parties! They’re gonna be the ulti ... ultimate party girls, and nobody back home will notice ‘cause it’s all happening on different timelines....”

“Hey, you have to have your fun with along work, or you’ll never make it. Seen it more than once. Even Ranma relaxes once in a while ... though we usually have to sic Kasumi on him to make it happen — works every time, he can’t refuse her anything.” _Ranma ... damn it._ She turned her head to look up at the ceiling. “So tell me about your latest trip to the 30th century,” she demanded.

Usagi was happy to oblige.

/\

“ ... so while Usa’s parents were gaping at _Ranma_ , of all people, all dolled up like a perky-cute loli-goth and skipping down the central aisle between the courtiers, the Three Musketeers and some of the servants snuck the catapults into the throne room. You’ve never _really_ seen someone hit with cream pies until those pies are six feet across and catapult-fired! Got some of the closer courtiers, too. They missed future-Setsuna, though. Usa’s ‘Puu’ took one look at Ranma, looked around the room until she spotted the others, then she was gone! Didn’t warn the king and queen, though, just abandoned them to their fate.”

Serenity was laughing so hard her sides hurt. “I can _not_ imagine Ranma like that,” she managed to gasp out when she finally fought her guffaws under control. “Is your Ranma really so well adjusted to being a girl?”

“Oh, don’t think that’s typical,” Usagi replied, “Ranma will put up with a lot for the sake of a good prank. Still ... there are days she still hates it, especially during that time of month, and the dreams she’s had of what happened when she was locked ... plus the battle with the Confederacy ... have been pretty brutal. But she says the good more than outweighs the bad, and Pluto says she’s a lot happier now than she was before.”

“Good to hear. And it’s good to hear about how much fun she’s had, and is. I only met _my_ Ranma after the Rise of the Machines, but ‘fun’ is one of the _last_ words I’d use to describe him. ‘Intense’, ‘focused’, driven’, but not ‘fun’.”

“Oh, my Ranma can be as driven as yours, the intensity she brings to developing her new martial arts style is actually a little scary. But she’s had Akane, and Usa and Hotaru to help her lighten up,” Usagi said with a slightly shaky wave of a hand.

“Good to hear,” Serenity repeated. She rolled onto her side to gaze at her counterpart. “Is that why you locked her? Did your Pluto ‘see’ this coming? Was this the price for saving Hotaru’s life?”

_What?_ The words were completely unexpected and while Usagi wasn’t drunk, she _was_ a bit tipsy. Maybe more than a bit. It took a moment for the meaning to register, then she froze. “I ... I didn’t ... why do you ...”

“Mercury scanned all the wounded, including Ranma,” Serenity answered. “She picked up the shield against all magic you’d mentioned ... and recognized the magical signature of that shield, Moon Queendom — specifically, the Moon Crystal. _You_ are the one that holds the Moon Crystal. So why did you do it?”

Usagi’s mind raced, looking for some excuse — _any_ excuse — and came up blank. Finally, she shrugged. “I didn’t. The Moon Crystal did it all by itself.”

“Really?” Serenity planted an elbow on the mattress and braced herself up to stare down at Usagi, looking for the little tells she knew they shared, and that she still couldn’t stop even though she knew about them — and not finding them. “Really — you aren’t lying. But _why_? Do you know? Did Pluto or Mercury have any ideas?”

_And there’s the_ next _obvious question. Oh, well, I never liked keeping it a secret, anyway. Sorry, ‘Puu’._ Usagi abruptly sat up and crossed her legs, Serenity sitting up to face her. “Yes, we know. It’s because Ranma is the reincarnation of our little sister. When Ranma found herself female and unable to move and assaulted by Happosai, she mentally reached out for anyone or any _thing_ that could help and from halfway across Tokyo the Moon Crystal recognized her soul as part of the Serenity line and responded.”

Serenity stared at her, gaping. “Ranma is ... Yasuko?” she breathed. “ _Yasuko?_ ”

“Yes, she ... he is, both of them,” Usagi agreed. “And yes, Pluto knew about it, and yes, she had good reasons for not telling you. _Talk_ to her about it before you say anything to Ranma. Please?”

Serenity stared at her younger self for a long moment, then finally nodded. “All right, I’ll wait. But Pluto’s reasons had better be good!” She hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly added, “I think ... without the loss of your Hotaru you might be trusting Pluto too much.”

“Oh, no,” Usagi disagreed, shaking her head. “Remember, I have _Ranma_ for a little sister! She may have all of Yasuko’s memories, but she’s eighteen while Yasuko was only six when she died. And _Ranma_ and authority figures, after what she went through ...”

Serenity laughed softly. “True. His and Kasumi’s fathers weren’t exactly model parents, were they? And his mother ... !” She twisted to swing her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. “Let’s get back to the party before something drastic happens. Have you ever seen Minako and Haruka drunk ... together? It’s a hoot!” She paused as a thought struck her. “But first, let’s put my hair into your braid and return your hair to the twin-ponytailed odangoes. We can exchange clothing and see if anyone realizes we’ve switched! _Especially_ our Endymions ...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter, probably shorter than this (though we’ll see what the Muse has in store), and it’s all over. Though the Author’s Note for that last chapter might be longer than the chapter itself — I’m not sure I’ll be coming back to this epic mega-arc later, so I thought I’d lay out what I was thinking for future plots going forward and provide something of a future history timeline.


	24. A Counting Out Song

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

  
— Archimedes

* * * * * * * * * *

Nabiki wasn’t surprised that Setsuna’s statement that the party headed to the future would return in the same split-second it left was accurate, but it was still disconcerting — especially since the instantaneous return made it seem as if Moon stepping _out_ of the liquid-gray oval of the portal merged with Pluto stepping _into_ it! Nabiki blinked away the weird optical illusion as others followed, Endymion, Mercury and Mars, Jupiter, Chibi-Moon — so Setsuna had been right, the princess’s parents _had_ allowed her to return — and Saturn ...

“Ranma, Akane, what happened to _you_?!” the middle Tendo burst out, losing track of the rest of the returnees, not even noticing Nodoka’s gasp of shock or Xian Pu bursting into the room with a chui in each hand. She stared at her sister and unofficial sister-in-law, their costumes, skin and hair oily and dirt-stained. She’d expected the future to be cleaner than that...

Ranma laughed at Nabiki and Nodoka gaping at the pair. “Nothing to worry about, we just took a detour on the way home.”

“Speak for yourself,” Akane huffed, then brightened. “What we really need is a shower! You guys tell them what happened, and we’ll be back when we’re clean.” She grabbed Ranma by the hand and pulled her out of the room towards Rei’s bedroom and the attached bathroom without giving anyone a chance to respond.

Venus reverted to civilian form. “They’re going to be awhile, you know,” she said, looking sidelong at Moon, “that girl has more than getting clean on her mind. I wonder if we’ll hear them out here this time?” She giggled as she got the desired pink blossoming on her leader’s cheek, then the giggles turned to laughter, joined by the others in the room, when Usagi poked her tongue out at her.

Nabiki shook her head, though she was grinning at the antics. All the Senshi except Hotaru and Usa were older than she was, but now that she was meeting them when things weren’t in crisis mode she wondered if she and Nodoka were the only adults in the room. For that matter, Ranma’s mother was adding her own happy giggles to the chorus, though she was also fanning pink cheeks. (Nabiki exempted Xian Pu, she hadn’t heard her laugh since Mu Tsu’s murder — though the Amazon _was_ at least smiling a little.)

“Enough!” Nabiki finally called out. “As much fun as it is to watch you torment Usagi, Ranma and Akane’s shower won’t last forever — however ‘distracted’ they get. I believe you have a story to tell?”

“We’d like to hear that, too ... however much fun it is to tease Usagi.”

Nabiki started at the unfamiliar voice and looked down, to find three housecats and a small crowd of kittens at her feet. Then she noticed the color of the adult cats’ fur, the quarter-moon-shaped patches in the fur on their foreheads, and her mind caught up. “Luna, Artemis, and ... Diana, right?” She hadn’t noticed the Mau arrive, but considering how she’d been staring at Ranma and Akane ...

“Luna!” Usagi darted over to scoop up the black Mau and cuddle her against her chest.

_Well, that answers that question_ , Nabiki thought with a chuckle at Luna’s objections to her treatment. She sat down on the couch, Nodoka joining her, as Minako stepped over to pick up Artemis (though the blonde didn’t cathandle him as ... enthusiastically ... as Usagi) and Diana herded her kittens toward Usa and Hotaru. Nabiki called out after them, “You’d best take your human forms before Ranma gets back, we don’t need a Neko-Ranma tearing up the property.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Artemis replied. He glanced sympathetically toward his wife, just as she produced just enough claw to ‘convince’ Usagi to drop her so she could scuttle over to her daughter and grandchildren — Usagi was being unusually clingy. Seeing that his wife was all right, he continued, “It turns out the Neko-ken was magical, and so destroyed at the same instant Ranma was locked. She’s still afraid of cats, though she’s a lot better with the kittens — maybe they’re the key to curing her fear? — so the adults will be taking human form when she comes back. But we don’t need to worry about a human-sized and -shaped cat trying to sharpen ki-claws on the furniture.”

“Really?” Nabiki asked. “Now I _really_ want to know what happened. So spill!”

/oOo\

“ ... and then we threw the best party I’ve ever been to!” Minako loudly finished, then added, “And as an idol I’ve been to quite a lot. It certainly wasn’t the food and entertainment, either — rotgut and thinly-disguised decades-old military rations aren’t what I would call great, the singing was pretty awful even before people started getting smashed, and something ... weird ... happened to pop music leading up to the collapse.”

She paused, tapping a lip with one fingernail as she mused, “We’re going to have to see if we can prevent that, this time. That music was ... what, military brass meets rap?” She shuddered.

From where she leaned against the doorframe, dressed in clothes stored at the shrine for emergencies, Ranma grinned as Setsuna started mock-berating Minako for wanting to manipulate the future over something as frivolous as pop music, rolling over the perky idol’s protests that there was nothing frivolous about pop music.

But the redhead’s attention was on their Firefly, sitting between her mothers. Ranma hadn’t really gotten a chance to look over her friend between waking up from her healing trance (which had been longer than it should have, unless the concussion had been _really_ serious — not something she intended to mention to her mother or Xian Pu) and their return trip home. Now that she could, she liked what she saw. Hotaru was ... relaxed, at peace, in a way she hadn’t been since the friendly fire deaths during the Confederacy’s invasion. And if Ranma was successfully sorting her friend’s ki out of the rest, along with the emotions riding it, it wasn’t just an act. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that Hotaru was _whole_ — it wasn’t like _Ranma_ was whole, after all she’d been through — but she would be all right.

Finally taking pity on Minako, Ranma stepped into the room, followed by a grinning Akane. (Though she suspected Setsuna was just pranking Minako, the Senshi of Time wasn’t normally that uptight on the subject — it wasn’t like the power to manipulate time was free for the taking).

“I figure the party was so great ‘cause you were celebratin’ a win — a big one,” she called out. “That always adds somethin’ special ta the festivities.”

Instantly, Xian Pu pushed away from where she was leaning against the wall and advanced on the pair. She growled, “Princess Yasuko, how dare you go into a fight without me!”

“Uhhh ...” _Oops!_ “The Jurai bombardment was nothin’!” she asserted weakly. _Yeah, right, like_ that’s _gonna fly..._

“That’s not what I was talking about and you know it!” the purple-haired girl ranted, face to face with her leader. “I’m your bodyguard! How am I supposed to bodyguard you if you leave me behind in an entirely different _timeline_?!”

“Uhhhh ...” Ranma rapidly sorted through her options, cursing herself for not seeing this coming. Say it was a side trip on the way home? Xian Pu would ask why they didn’t take a few extra seconds to fetch her. Point out that her official bodyguard was pregnant? She’d ask why they couldn’t have simply waited until she and Setsuna had had their babies and were back in shape. (Which was a good point, why _hadn’t_ they waited? It wasn’t like they couldn’t have returned to that instant any time they chose.)

“I’m sorry?” she weakly said, finally.

Xian Pu froze. She asked, “Did you just apologize?”

Well ... yeah?”

A broad grin spread across Xian Pu’s face. “I didn’t think that was possible! Yes! Apology accepted!”

Akane’s arms circled her lover’s waist. “Good for you, Ranma, I’m proud of you,” she loudly whispered.

The room erupted in laughter as Ranma blushed. “I’m not _that_ bad,” she muttered.

“Yes, you are,” Nabiki disagreed, “but we love you, anyway. So, now that Nodoka, Xian Pu and I are caught up and the lovebirds are through enjoying each other in the shower —” She grinned at the two as their cheeks turned fiery. “— I have a few questions. Mainly, what now? Why am I here? Sure, Ranma and Akane have been rooming with me, but I’ve hardly been part of the ‘inner circle’, so to speak. Not up to now.”

“Right.” Setsuna stood up and stepped over against one wall where everyone could see her while Ranma and Akane sat on the floor in front of Nabiki and Nodoka on the couch. (Ranma carefully ignored how three look-like-furry-demons jumped down from various laps and shifted into human forms, the purple-haired youngest (barely) adult Mau sitting on the floor and gathering kittens into her lap — Ranma knew the adult Mau weren’t really the demons that haunted her dreams, but the way they looked ... !)

Setsuna waited until everyone was comfortable. As she waited, she summoned the Garnet Staff and pressed one of the golden gems surrounding the massive garnet that topped the staff, a gem she’d made use of often before the Fall, during diplomatic visits with Queen Serenity to other star nations. Enemy or ally, everyone spied on everyone and Serenity had wanted their own discreet device for disrupting all forms of electronic and magical surveillance. It would work equally well now, for disrupting the surveillance devices installed by the Emperor’s people. What was coming was something she wanted to keep within the family.

Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “You’ve all seen or heard about the future we were headed for before Ranma ... regained her memories of her life as Yasuko. We have the chance to avoid much of the worst of it, though our new path will have its own wars if not as bloody. But we won’t be able to just sit back and let it happen. Up to now, you’ve been able to simply enjoy your lives as we wait for the next interdimensional incursion or ancient or future threat, and deal with them. Not anymore.”

Ranma fought not to tighten up at the singing tension abruptly riding the ki filling the room. Except from her and Akane, of course, and she suspected they would be as well if they weren’t both centered. She was tempted to let go of her center, she could feel a headache beginning to come on, but rejected the thought — Setsuna ... _Puu_ ... was _also_ tensing up, and the redhead wanted to keep up the ability to read her ancient friend.

Setsuna paused to glance around the room, her own strain invisible, then smiled tightly. “That said, for most of us nothing changes right away. We can go on with things as they are for about the next ... say, four years. Cooking school.” She nodded to Makoto. “Careers.” Haruka and Michiru, Minako. “Babies.” A smile for Xian Pu as one hand unconsciously rose to caress her own stomach.

“But not all of us.”

She glanced around the room again, then focused on their leader. “Usagi, I know you want nothing more than to be a housewife, but I’d like you to go back to school.”

“Awwww, do I _have_ to?” the blonde whined, and Ranma and Akane sighed with relief, the tension filling the room vanishing for a moment under a wave of laughter.

Setsuna was smiling as the laughter died away, but took the question seriously. “No, you don’t, we can get by without it. But the battles in the near future are going to be more physical than magical or supernatural, and your power set doesn’t fit that well. On the other hand, what we could really use is a _diplomat_ , and for that you’d be superb — the way you love everyone, even the ones you are fighting, comes through. People on the other side of the table will trust you because you’ll have their welfare at heart as well, and they’ll sense it.

“Now, I can arrange for you to receive a diplomat posting, even if you’ll be the youngest anyone has known — young enough that everyone will be wondering just who you’re connected to because there’s no other way you could get it — but you need at least the diploma if not the experience to justify the post. And that means schooling.”

Usagi crossed her arms and huffed, pouting, but nodded.

Next, Setsuna turned to Nabiki. “I imagine you’re finding the degree in finance I suggested mind-numbingly boring?”

“Yes,” Nabiki agreed, “but I expect a career in finance to be a lot less boring than I thought, what with what the mushroom-shaped clouds over Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis and London are going to do to the world economy.”

All those that had been on the expedition to the futures froze in shock — between the weeks away and the excitement of the battles and victory celebration, they had actually forgotten! Or at least, had put it out of their minds as they focused on other things. Usagi had gone pale and started to shake, until Mamoru let go of her hand to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her against him.

“Not just the world economy,” Setsuna replied, “but I’d like that to be your focus. I own some companies, when you graduate you can pick whichever you’d like for practical training. In about a decade the Senshi will be going public in a big way — not just what we have now, where word of mouth has spread throughout Japan that those news reels preceding movies of the Senshi in action are real while the rest of the world thinks they’re a bizarre form of entertainment, but in a way that is simply undeniable. When that happens, I want to form a company to handle Senshi merchandizing with the profits going to charity and re-investment, and I want _you_ in charge of that. You’d be both the manager of the Senshi’s public face and a spokeswoman for Japan’s economic future.”

Nabiki stared at her, wide-eyed, then broke into a broad grin. “Sounds” — _like fun_ , she thought but didn’t say, considering the amount of suffering that would go with it — “exciting.”

“That much, I can definitely promise you.”

Nabiki added, “And I imagine we will be working together ... _very_ closely.”

Setsuna nodded, and suppressed a shudder when Nabiki’s eyes narrowed speculatively. The Tendo’s future as essentially a benign robber baron hadn’t been the only possibility she’d seen — Nabiki was a girl attracted to personified power, and the physical appearance of its wielder didn’t matter all _that_ much. She had been underwhelmed by Ranma when he’d first arrived at the dojo, after all, at first considering him little better than a new family jester and potential minion in spite of his incredible physical capabilities and sculpted body. Apparently, from what Setsuna had observed in the Gates, the Senshi-level power wielded by a woman both brilliant and cunning and incredibly connected was an entirely different matter. And it had been a _very_ long time since Setsuna had allowed someone as ... fragile ... as Nabiki to get that close to her. Not even the children and grandchildren of Belldandy and Keiichi she would have helped raise, before Ranma Remembered, really qualified — though not as physically tough or fast-healing as a Senshi, their divine heritage would make them more than human. Especially their potential lifespans.

_Think about it later, you have more important things to worry about right now. Like Yasuko._

But she could put that off just a _little_ longer.

She turned to the Senshi of Ice. “Ami, I’m going to have to ask you to put your own future on hold, as well. I know how badly you want to follow in your mother’s footsteps as a doctor and you’ll have plenty of time to pursue that later, but for now we are going to need you to be our mad scientist, instead. You are going to take us to the stars ... or at least, the rest of our solar system. The stars will come later.”

“I’m _what_?” Ami demanded, eyes wide.

“Taking us to the stars,” Setsuna repeated. She paused, considering her words, then continued. “In a few years there is going to be a tsunami, a bad one, though I’m doing what I quietly can to keep the number of deaths to a minimum — early warning systems, planned evacuation points, that sort of thing. But there is going to be a great deal of infrastructure damage, including to several nuclear power plants. And that is where _you_ come in.

“Before that happens I want you to try to publish a paper on the existence of a previously unsuspected dimension, one to which you have successfully opened a portal.”

She paused, grinning, until a suspicious Ami asked, “ _Which_ dimension?”

“The magic dimension, though you’ll need to name it something else. The ether, perhaps, that name has a long scientific — not to say science fiction — pedigree.”

Ami sat bolt upright in her seat, shouting, “ _What!?_ Are you _crazy?_ Don’t you remember what _happened_ to the researchers that ... oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh’.”

“That ... that could work,” Ami mused, leaning back in her seat and staring at the empty wall with a contemplative expression the rest knew well.

Haruka leaned over and lightly smacked her upside the head.

“Ow!” Ami jerked in her seat and rubbed at her blue hair. “What was that for?”

“You have a few things to explain before you space out,” Haruka stated, grinning as the younger girl blushed. “What’s the magic dimension, what happened to the researchers, and what does it have to do with nuclear reactors and getting into space?”

“Right, well ...” Ami glanced toward Setsuna, who motioned for her to continue. “Before the Moon Queendom period, one question scientists couldn’t answer was where magic comes from. The energy we call magic just shows up out of nowhere, accumulates to a certain point then goes away again, nobody knew where. Everyone assumed that there must be a different dimension from which it was ‘leaking’ through — it had to be coming from _somewhere_ , after all — but nobody could find it. Eventually everyone gave up, at least so far as state- or corporate-funded research went, and that was where things stood until a couple researchers playing around on their own time thought they’d figured it out, and set up a portal through which they could insert a large probe to send back readings. The resulting blast of pure magic turned them into a red smear across the wall, and the only reason the wall survived is that it backed up against a mountainside. A split-second later the portal itself was blown back through the wall behind it, across the hall and through another wall, and scattered in pieces across the cafeteria on the other side — fortunately _not_ during a meal, so there were only a few more injuries from shrapnel. Apparently, the pressure differential between the two dimensions is extreme. Those portals were the bedrock of large-scale production of magic items, but by then we already had modern power sources and motive systems. But now ... !”“

She looked around expectantly, and her face fell as all she found were blank looks.

Mamoru chuckled. “Why don’t you pretend we aren’t all as smart as you, and spell out the obvious,” he suggested, and the room filled with laughter as Ami’s cheeks again turned fiery.

“Well ... nuclear reactors are essentially giant steam engines, everything designed to heat water to turn turbines to produce electricity,” she began. “We can tear out everything but the turbines and replace it all with a portal to the ... ether, I think you’re right, Setsuna, that’ll work nicely ... to provide the ‘push’. No more radioactive hazard, no more need for a source of water so we can build them anywhere, we essentially have unlimited, convenient energy.

“As for space, thrust is thrust. Attach a few portals to a vehicle body, and you have unlimited thrust with no change in weight thanks to consumed fuel to throw off the calculations. I’ll have to play with the numbers, but at least the inner solar system — out to Jupiter, maybe — should be readily accessible.” She fell silent again, her eyes losing focus and her lips silently moving as she talked to herself, and a moment later her Mercury computer was in her lap, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

Setsuna smiled fondly at the sight. There would be regrets later when it set in just how much of her life Ami was putting on hold, but for now she was happily engaged with an intellectual problem like she’d never had before. _Now for the rough one._

Taking a deep breath, Setsuna visibly braced herself, drawing the attention of everyone in the room but Ami. “And finally, Yasuko needs to get married.”

/\

Ranma had been growing concerned as the impromptu meeting went on. To all appearances her ‘Puu’ had been focused on Usagi, Nabiki and Ami in their turn, but she had been growing more and more tense, worry saturating her ki, and the redhead couldn’t escape the feeling that it had something to do with her.

Then Setsuna dropped her bombshell.

“What!?” Ranma jerked to her feet, her hold on her center shattered, as the shout from Usagi and the Three Musketeers made Setsuna wince (and yanked Ami out of her problem-induced fugue state). “Forget it,” the redhead growled, fists clenched. “Unless you’ve come up with a cure fer my lock it’s not happenin’, the only person I’m marryin’ is Akane.”

A suddenly pale, shaking Akane rose to her feet and took hold of one of her lover’s fists. She pushed it open so they could entwine fingers.

Ranma closed her eyes and fought for her own center and took a deep breath as she sensed Akane’s love and concern filling her — and mixed in with the outrage filling the room, the worry and regret that ‘Puu’ was radiating. Setsuna didn’t like it any more than they did — which actually made it worse.

From the way Akane’s grip had tightened, she was probably picking that up as well. Her voice cut through the uproar. “You said ‘Yasuko’, not ‘Ranma’. Just who is she supposed to marry?”

“The Crown Prince.”

Silence slammed down.

“The ... the Crown Prince? _Our_ crown prince?” Ranma finally asked. “Why? Why me? I’m not high society or anything like that!”

“No, but you _are_ the younger daughter of the ruling queen of the realm that much of Japanese high society secretly traces its lineage back to — the Kunos are far from the only family that remembers, and respects that memory.” Setsuna finally took her seat and rubbed at her face, suddenly looking very, very tired. She eventually continued, “The truth is that Akishino doesn’t want to marry again, to anyone, any more than you want to marry him — he’d much rather remain sequestered in his monastery, mourning his dead family. Why anyone, much less you? Because he and the emperor believed that none of the collateral lines that the imperial title will go to if he doesn’t produce a new heir are ... suitable to the times. And they believed that the death of his family, and of his brother and _his_ family with them, was not an accident but a deliberate assassination. They were right on both counts.”

The news yanked everyone else in the room to their feet, shouting, the room filling with imprecations, accusations, oaths of vengeance, speculations, impromptu planning, all running together into an incoherent wall of noise so loud Usagi couldn’t make herself heard to bring it under control, the wave of overpowering anger threatening Ranma’s hold on her center. Diana hurriedly collected her kittens out of the way where they wouldn’t get trampled, Luna and Artemis flanking her.

“Everybody shut up!”

Silence again descended as everyone turned to stare at Minako ... but a Minako they hadn’t seen in a long time, not really since their previous lives when she had been the Inner Senshi’s commander, in training and in battle — deadly serious, without a hint of her usual cheerful zaniness. “Let’s let Setsuna finish her explanation, shall we?” she asked in a tone that threatened _painful_ retribution on anyone that disagreed with her.

Yes, _just_ like the old training fields. Everyone was seated in seconds.

“Thank you.” Setsuna straightened in her seat as she nodded to Minako, then focused on Ranma and Akane. Her eyes softened, and Ranma realized they were still clutching hands. From the sudden wave of sympathy from throughout the room (except for Ranma’s mother, who was radiating the oddest mix of sympathy, delight and guilt) she had to look like a frightened child, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go.

Setsuna said, “Let’s get something out of the way. First, the Emperor and Crown Prince are both aware that you are lovers, and have no problem with that. The Emperor has stated that a place will be made for Akane within the imperial household that would allow her to stay close. Second, while there will need to be children, and Ranma will need to be the genetic mother, in vitro fertilization and host mothers will be fine, though it will need to be kept secret. Fortunately, we have a newly settled Amazon village that will be happy to provide both secrecy and host mothers. Any nights Ranma spends in her husband’s bed will be for appearances only, and never in the imperial palace. Third,” — nodding to Xian Pu with a quick smile — “they are aware of your Amazon bodyguards, and again, have no problem making room for them among the imperial household ... considering their justified suspicions, just the opposite.

“As for why you ... as I said, the Emperor and Crown Prince simply want someone at least somewhat acceptable to the Japanese elite that can protect the children she provides and carry the fight to the murderer of their families and so keep a scion of a collateral line from becoming emperor and give them their denied justice. Between being Yasuko reborn and a high-end martial artist allied with the Senshi, you fulfill both criteria handily. As for me...” She paused, her attention turned inward as minute after minute passed, then finally looked around to find everyone staring at her, on the edges of their seats. (Except Diana, she was flat on her stomach pulling a couple of her kittens out from underneath the couch.) “There are two enemies, the Jade Emperor, and our own Japanese Traditionalists.

“The Jade Emperor has been China’s on-again off-again ruler from the shadows for most of its history. At times he has lost control, either through invasion or when his puppets become so corrupt and decadent that they become useless, but he has always recovered it. He lost control when China fractured under its last emperor, then chose Chiang Kai-shek as his tool to reunite it — and we all know how well _that_ worked out — so he only slowly extended his influence after Chairman Mao died and his various tools in the Communist Party moved up in the hierarchy. But now that he is once again fully in control, he is working to re-establish Chinese hegemony throughout east and central Asia. The disguised assassination of much our Imperial Family was intended to weaken future Japanese opposition to his push once the current Emperor and Crown Prince die and pass the throne to a new, weak emperor. He didn’t expect the nuclear annihilation of four cities, and that’s where the Traditionalists come in.”

She paused for a moment, face bleak as she stared into nothing, and the room was absolutely still as everyone waited for her to resume. Finally, she said, “The world economy is going to take an enormous hit, but that isn’t going to stop the countries along the Pacific Rim from ramping up their military spending after the United States pulls out all its Army and Marine units to help deal with the situation back home — even those in South Korea. The economy will take an even worse hit when the Americans, out of anger at the destruction of their cities and fear that the ones responsible will try again for the cities they missed —”

“Which cities, and how did they ... how _will_ they know?” Nabiki broke in to ask.

“Seattle, New Orleans, New York, Tel Aviv.” Setsuna smiled grimly when Nabiki and Hotaru winced. “You two can explain the importance of that later. Several bombs went off, but didn’t go critical. Two others failed to go off, and in the case of the one meant for Tel Aviv didn’t reach its target when the boat smuggling it in was scuttled to avoid interception — all will be found. Anyway, the Jade Emperor is even less prepared when the Americans’ next president is the hardest of hardliners, and that president finally responds to those cities’ nuclear destruction with a nuclear response of his own — at least two nuclear missiles targeted at every major city in North Korea, and throughout the Muslim world, where spontaneous street celebrations are taking place right now. Well, _almost_ all, from Pakistan to Morocco. Indonesia gets a pass because the government there is smart enough to do its best suppress those celebrations as soon as it can mobilize its army. But that ‘almost all’ _did_ include the Middle East, with its oil.

“And that brings us to the Traditionalists, and where things diverge.”

Ranma was distantly surprised that Akane wasn’t complaining yet about how tightly she was clutching her lover’s hand. Then ‘Puu’ refocused on her, and it was actually a relief when her already straining hold on her center failed under her friend’s renewed compassion. By that point even Akane’s angry support was a burden.

“Ranma, if ... Yasuko refuses to marry the Crown Prince, then we’re on the path to the future we just visited. Japan grabs control of the South Seas oil fields but shares enough with our neighbors to keep them going ... barely ... and they help us stare down China. The Jade Emperor decides to go north into Siberia instead, but the war with Russia is costly in men, hoarded oil, and equipment, and ultimately inconclusive and so a failure. Over the next decade the Traditionalists — those dedicated to the ‘good old days’ when their ancestors were daimyos and samurai — rise to power on a wave of public discontent thanks to the economic depression, re-establish the Empire over much of coastal Asia, and conquer eastern China. When the United States breaks up under the strain of defeating and occupying Europe, they occupy Hawaii and much of the American Pacific coast — just before the Jade Emperor successfully assassinates their tame Emperor and civil war breaks out, and the Zoneminds begin their own war on humanity. We all get a long vacation until then, and absolutely will _not_ be moving into space. I am _not_ giving the tyrannical butchers that rise to the top control of the high orbitals.

“If Yasuko _does_ marry the Crown Prince, the _people_ are mostly enthusiastic. They’ve seen you fighting to protect them in those movie news reels and will see a few more, and feel you’re one of them — and the whole apparently slow courtship we act out over the four years leading to the wedding ceremony gives them some light in the dark days ahead. But the Traditionalists — or better said, the _proto_ -Traditionalists, the ones that would coalesce into that group later — are split. Some accept the marriage because of your heritage, others reject it because while you may be honorable, and Princess Yasuko of their ancient heritage, you are _far_ from ‘traditional’. And _those_ are the ones an anxious Jade Emperor latches onto for his scapegoats for another assassination attempt. By the time that’s over, the Traditionalist political worldview is thoroughly discredited — linked to attempted murder and revolt against the Emperor — and they are never again a serious threat. The Jade Emperor focuses on us and the South Pacific oil fields instead of Russia, and that eventual war creates a new slowly expanding federal alliance that moves into space while the United States and Europe fight their mutually destructive wars. We pick up the pieces when they fragment, and move on to the stars as an increasingly unified planet.”

Setsuna paused for a long moment, then said, “Ranma, Akane, how would you two like to see what your future looks like, if you accept our Emperor’s request?”

“I thought —” Ranma broke off, choking slightly from a mouth gone dry. She worked up some spit and tried again. “I thought you couldn’t show the future, there are too many possibilities.”

“You’re right, I can’t. But I _can_ create an amalgamation, combine the most likely futures into a single image.”

Ranma glanced looked over at Akane next to her, then back at Setsuna when her lover nodded. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Setsuna rose to her feet, picked up the Garnet Staff, and a few moments later a new wavy-gray portal hung in the air. Ranma tried to take a deep breath and found she was already hyperventilating to the point she was a little lightheaded. She could not _believe_ how badly she had lost control of herself. Closing her eyes, she forced her breath to even out, deep, slow and even, then reached for her center, then ignored the sympathy and worry from the others in the room to reach for Akane through their linked hands. A moment later she had to smile as Akane’s love flooded through her. They could do this.

She opened her eyes and strode through the portal, gently tugging Akane after her.

The rocky, bleak, dim, fog-enshrouded landscape hadn’t changed in the less-than-an-hour since they’d passed through on their way home (assuming any time had passed at all, not that she cared), but this time Ranma wasn’t even tempted to experiment with the link between ki and Time Gates as she’d been during the last trip. Instead, as she waited for Setsuna to join her and Akane and close the portal behind them, her gaze was fixed on the column-flanked Gates — except when Akane briefly stepped between her and the Gates as she switched sides.

Akane was careful to have a solid grip on Ranma’s other hand with their ki intermingling through it before she let go of the first ... and shook circulation back into the hand Ranma had been clutching. She didn’t say anything to a blushing Ranma’s hastily whispered apology, but Ranma could feeling her ‘laughing’ through their entwined ki and relaxed with a rueful grin.

Then Setsuna stepped passed them and planted the Garnet Staff in the bare dirt and ordered, “Saotome Ranma Yasuko and family, 2019, composite.”

Ranma and Akane stepped up alongside her as the phases of the moon carved in the Gates’ panels vanished, and Ranma’s breath hitched at the sight of the crystal-clear image that replaced them.

The woman standing in front of her was clearly older — a woman, not a teenager — but just as clearly her. She wasn’t much taller, if at all, but the only word to describe her was ‘elegant’. Her flame-red hair was still in a single braid, draped over one shoulder to hang down between her breasts, but it was longer and the braiding more intricate and shot through with silver and gold threads. She was dressed in the same black pants and silk shirt she had favored, but the shirt was the deep blue of the cheongsam she had worn to the banquet and fealty ceremony on her first night at the Amazons’ new Japanese village; it even had the same Moon Crystal embroidered in silver thread. The black leather bracers on her forearms shone with careful oiling and had kanji carved along their length.

On one side she held the hand of a five- or six-year-old boy dressed just like her with the black hair that used to be his and the confident grin that was still hers, and beside him with his hand resting on the boy’s shoulder stood a clearly proud Crown Prince Akishino dressed in the formal black and gray suit currently typical of the imperial family. On Ranma’s other side she held the hand of the first boy’s younger brother, his other hand held by an Akane dressed in the red cheongsam with gold thread-embroidered sun she had worn at that first banquet — no, it looked almost the same, but had a longer skirt and was loose enough to accommodate panties — and had a baby sleeping curled up in her free arm, a girl from the clothing. It took Ranma a moment to recognize the teenaged boy standing behind the boy between Akane and Yasuko with his hands on the younger boy’s shoulders — Satoru, the boy whose life she had saved, the first time she successfully healed someone else. All three boys were dressed in variations of Yasuko’s high-falutin’ version of Ranma’s favorite style.

And it _was_ ‘Yasuko’ — while outwardly she looked like Ranma all grown up, and both she and the Akane to her side still had the firm musculature of fighters, Ranma seemed to sense a peace in her older self that she had only known in deep meditation when she ‘danced’ and occasionally at night in bed, snuggled up in Akane’s arms. And Yasuko had a soft smile that Ranma was sure she’d never borne herself ... at least not in public, maybe alone with Akane. Whatever her future self had been through over that decade, she was _happy_.

She only realized she’d been walking toward the Gates when she reached out to touch her image. “She’s beautiful,” she murmured. “ _They’re_ beautiful.”

“Yes, they are,” Setsuna — no, _Puu_ — answered from behind them.

“And those are really my children?”

“The younger three, yes, though you don’t bear any of them.”

“No, that would be me,” Akane said, then forced a giggle when she felt Ranma’s shock through their linked hands. “Did you really think I would let anyone else bear your children? I just wish ...” She broke off, shrugged.

“Actually, the baby girl is both of yours.”

“What!?” This time it was Ranma’s turn to sense her lover’s shock through their link, just before Akane pulled her around to face the Senshi of Time. “How?” Akane demanded. “I thought Ami said it would be decades at best, before we could use two eggs for a child!”

‘Puu’ grinned. “Some temporary Spring of Drowned Man water and a cup, and you can supply the sample needed for in vitro fertilization.”

This time the shock was so strong that both girls lost their hold on their centers, then Ranma dropped to her knees with her arms wrapped around her gut, pealing laughter as Akane blushed so red she was almost purple. Between guffaws the redhead managed to gasp out, “And ... and you always said _I_ ... was the pervert!”

“Stow it, Baka,” Akane growled, _lightly_ cuffing her lover alongside the head. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it, yourself.” But her glare was spoiled by her growing smile. “Kasumi is going to be overjoyed. I don’t know about Nabiki.”

“She thinks of it herself. If I hadn’t told you now, she would have mentioned the possibility in a few years.”

“And the Crown Prince is all right with it?” Ranma asked, forcing her laughter down and rising to her feet.

“Once you have the heir and a spare, yes. Of course, you don’t _stop_ with three. You slow down a bit, if only because we’re all busy for awhile, but neither your clan nor your imperial line will be in any danger of dying out.”

Ranma smiled at the way Akane was now positively beaming, then turned around to look again at ‘Yasuko’ and her family. She softly said, “There was never really any doubt how I’d choose, was there?”

“No,” ‘Puu’ replied just as softly. “Sometimes character really is destiny, and your own character was strong enough to leave me curled up in a ball on my kitchen floor clutching my head when you remembered being Yasuko, and yanked our entire future onto a new and better course. You simply aren’t selfish enough to condemn six billion people to death to avoid a marriage of convenience. But your happiness is important, too — to the future and to me.”

“Thank you.” Ranma turned around and reached again for Akane’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

‘Puu’ nodded, plucked the Garnet Staff from where she’d stuck it in the ground, and moments later Ranma was leading the way back into the room they’d left a split-second ago, to find everyone staring at the portal — and her — expectantly.

“I’ll do it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s a wrap! I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back to this for future stories, so I’m going to post one more chapter, an appendix with the timeline I’ve worked out, the general story ideas I’ve come up with within that timeline, and my general thoughts on where Ranma would go with the ki techniques she’d work out and order she’d create.
> 
> The chapter title comes from a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Feel free to ignore the first and last stanzas (not included below), I do.
> 
> Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, and Mo  
> Were the First Big Four of the Long Ago,  
> When the Pole of the Earth sloped thirty degrees,  
> And Central Europe began to freeze,  
> And they needed Ambassadors staunch and stark  
> To steady the Tribes in the gathering dark:  
> But the frost was fierce and flesh was frail,  
> So they launched a Magic that could not fail.  
> (Singing) _"Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!_  
>  _Hear the wolves across the snow!_  
>  _Some one has to kill 'em--so_  
>  _Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo_  
>  _Make--you--It!"_
> 
> Slow ly the Glacial Epoch passed,  
> Central Europe thawed out at last;  
> And, under the slush of the melting snows  
> The first dim shapes of the Nations rose.  
> Rome, Britannia, Belgium, Gaul--  
> Flood and avalanche fathered them all;  
> And the First Big Four, as they watched the mess,  
> Pitied Man in his helplessness.  
> (Singing) _"Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!_  
>  _Trouble starts When Nations grow,_  
>  _Some one has to stop it--so_  
>  _Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!_  
>  _Make-you-It!"_
> 
> Thus it happened, but none can tell  
> What was the Power behind the spell--  
> Fear, or Duty, or Pride, or Faith--  
> That sent men shuddering out to death--  
> To cold and watching, and, worse than these,  
> Work, more work, when they looked for ease--  
> To the days discomfort, the nights despair,  
> In the hope of a prize that they never could share,  
> (Singing) _"Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!_  
>  _Man is born to Toil and Woe._  
>  _One will cure another--so_  
>  _Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo_  
>  _Make--you--It!"_
> 
> Once and again, as the Ice went North  
> The grass crept up to the Firth of Forth.  
> Once and again, as the Ice came South  
> The glaciers ground over Lossiemouth.  
> But, grass or glacier, cold or hot,  
> The men went out who would rather not,  
> And fought with the Tiger, the Pig and the Ape,  
> To hammer the world into decent shape.  
> (Singing) _"Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo!_  
>  _What's the use of doing so?_  
>  _Ask the Gods, for we don't know;_  
>  _But Eenee, Meenee, Mainee, Mo_  
>  _Make-us-It!"_


	25. Appendix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this finally does it for what is simultaneously the first and the second of my two epic storylines — the first, because it was the storyline that pulled me into writing fanfic; the second, because I started writing _Ranma, the Naive Succubus_ first to see if I could actually do this. I may come back to this later, but I may not with all the other stories bouncing around in my mind. As Bilbo said, it's dangerous stepping out your door — road runs into road, and you never know where you'll be swept off to! But wherever that may be, it's been fun.

For anyone interested, here are my thoughts on the future history of _A New Future_. They're a little rough, but ought to give some guidance for anyone that wants to play in the same sandbox.

This timeline is primarily a mishmash of **_GURPS Ogre_** and **_GURPS Solar Patrol_** , with dates and events modified and additions added as required.

  *          **1943:** The U.S. Department of the Navy decides against funding the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) project.
  *          **1945:** Budget issues and a management crisis at Bell Labs derail work into improved telecommunication switches. The transistor is never invented.


  *          **1956-1964:** Humanity struggles to reach the stars, but both Soviet and American efforts to launch and sustain artificial satellites fail. No rocket design proves capable of carrying itself to orbit. The first primitive general-purpose computers appear to help solve rocketry problems, but they cannot fulfill the requirements of the space program.


  *          **1998:** The “euro” becomes the official currency of the European Union, except in the U.K.
  *          **2001:** Islamist terrorists fly hijacked airliners into the World Trade towers, the Pentagon.
  *          **2005:** Claiming economic and security concerns, the European Union annexes the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, and Vojvodina, creating a protectorate. Russian protests are ineffectual.
  *          **2009:** European Union annexes Balkan nations, when the UN declines to take effective action the US withdraws from the UN, orders it out of the country. Ranma is frozen in girl-form, gains protection from magical influence, and remembers a past life as Princess Usagi’s little sister while resisting Happosai’s final attack, leaves dojo with Akane. A final cross-dimensional invasion defeated by a combined force of a JNDF unit, Amazon warriors, the Senshi, and fighters from Nerima—Mu Tse and Kuno Tatewaki are killed. Nukes go off in San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston and London (more fail to reach or properly explode in Tel Aviv, Chicago, New York City, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.). UK begins rounding up all perceived Muslim threats. EU protests perceived human rights violations, UK unilaterally withdraws from the EU. US, then world economies collapse, worldwide depression begins. The United States begins withdrawing its troops from Europe, South Korea and Japan. Japan revises its constitution’s provisions limiting its military and begins re-arming.
  *          **2011:** In Japan, engineers working from the theories of Ami Mizuno perfect the ether aperture, a simple device capable of drawing almost limitless energy from the ether of space (magic, actually, but scientists must have their figleaf). A massive earthquake and tsunami seriously damages several nuclear reactors, encourages Japan to adopt new energy source. US begins rounding up and expelling illegal immigrants, locks down southern border.
  *          **2012:** Formation of the Paneuropean Federation from the European Union, Russia, the Balkans, and other western former Soviet republics. The new nation dissolves NATO. US elects hard-right Republican president.
  *          **2013:** New US government begins cracking down on internal dissent, Muslims, rounds up millions of illegal immigrants and dumps them across the Mexican border. UK rounds up entire Muslim population and dumps it on the beaches of France. US nukes most of the major cities of the Muslim world and North Korea. China incorporates North Korea, “to maintain order.” Paneuropean Federation condemns the US and UK actions, breaks off diplomatic relationships with the US. Canada follows suit, ends cooperation on border. Canada accepts tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from devastated Middle East. Yasuko marries the Crown Prince; she, Akane and their Amazon/ex-Confederate bodyguards prevent assassination attempt at wedding. Outers (minus Hotaru) crush Jade Emperor’s spy network in Japan.
  *          **2014:** Using the ether aperture for thrust, the first space craft is launched by Japan, orbits the Earth before returning to land safely. One successful Muslim cross-border attack across the Canadian border, the US invades Canada, incorporates it into the US. Massive destabilization of Mexico leads to US invasion, incorporation of the country. Massive oil discovery in Venezuela. Within two weeks, Brazil moves in and grabs the country. US protests, begins mobilizing troops as well as Latin American allies. Paneuropean Federation protests, mobilizes troops in support of Brazil. The US invokes the Monroe Doctrine, the two sides begin cold war.
  *          **2015:** Argentina declares war on Brazil, receives support from the US and allies, Brazil receives support from PF.
  *          **2018:** The first Japanese spaceship reaches the moon, Japan claims large swathes of the lunar surface. Brazilian War fizzles out with little effect.
  *          **2019:** The first lunar settlements — optimistically called colonies several years early, are founded.
  *          **2020:** China invades South Korea, attacks Japan, Vietnam when they and Australia respond by declaring war. Senshi go public and slow invasion of Vietnam to a crawl.
  *          **2021:** First Japanese ship sent to Mars and Venus. Mars is mostly desert with manmade canals, inhabited by both human and three nonhuman races. Venus is mostly swamps and jungles, inhabited by reptilian Stone Age race. Japan central to the creation of the Union of Pacific States, a new federal government/alliance.
  *          **2022:** The UPS takes the fight to China directly. With the help of Ryoga, the Senshi locate the hidden lair of the Jade Emperor, take the fight to him and his allies. Without the Jade Emperor pulling the strings the Chinese Communist Party collapses, China fragments into warlordism, sections along the coast join the UPS.
  *          **2023:** Quebec economy worsens. Protesting “cultural imperialism,” Quebec seeks Paneuropean aid to preserve use of the French language in its schools. High-level diplomacy accomplishes nothing; English remains the official US language. Second expedition to Mars, this time under the auspices of the UPS, open diplomatic and trade relations with human city-states.
  *          **2025:** UPS and Martian allies attacked by Gray Men.
  *          **2028:** Gray Men defeated on surface, retreat to underground fortresses.
  *          **2029:** With Mars situation stable, UPS sends expedition to Venus (already semi-occupied at the cooler poles by a small number of private wildcat operators, mostly Australian). Finds reptilian sentient race.
  *          **2030:** Under increasing pressure to join Paneurope, United Kingdom signs Treaty of Liverpool to formally ally United Kingdom and US for “mutual defense.”
  *          **2031:** Gray Men begin raids on Martian surface.
  *          **2032:** First asteroid belt colonies founded.
  *          **2033:** First contact with Jovian system, also inhabited by humans ruled by the Overlord of Jupiter.
  *          **2038:** Contact is made with an intelligent insectoid species on Venus. Brush wars between the Venusian reptilian and the insectoid sentient races take on a new flavor with the addition of Earth-built weaponry. Smuggling begins to become a serious issue. Venusian Dead Zone discovered, circle of territory within which all electronic communication is lost and from which no airship returns.
  *          **2040:** The beginning of the Last War between the United States and the Paneuropean Union. Japanese Traditionalists launch attack from secret Moon bases; when defeated, survivors flee towards Saturn.
  *          **2041:** First ships land on Mercury.
  *          **2043:** Interplanetary piracy begins to be an issue, Solar Patrol created to combat it.
  *          **2047:** Combined Martian/UPS military assault and destroy Gray Men underground fortresses, though with heavy casualties.
  *          **2048:** The Overlord launches attack on asteroid belt, the Venus colonies, and Earth. His forces are spread too thin, defeated in detail.
  *          **2049:** UPS invades moons of Jupiter, overthrows the Overlord of Jupiter. Collects scientific treasure trove. Begins rebuilding Venus and asteroid belt colonies.
  *          **2050:** Using technical knowledge discovered in Jovian databases, the first UPS interstellar ship is launched.
  *          **2051:** Beginning of Paneuropean Civil War. US withdraws recognition of Paneuropean government but offers to honor Second Armistice “by separate negotiation with legitimate national governments.”
  *          **2052:** Paneurope continues to fragment. US military remains preoccupied by unrest at home and secret preparations for South American invasion.
  *          **2053:** US signs treaties with various Paneuropean successor states, creating puppet governments. US invades Nova Brasilia, meeting unexpectedly heavy resistance from Brasilian and other South American forces.
  *          **2054:** Overextended US withdraws entirely from South America, abandoning Amazon Combat Zone. France and Ukraine rebel against puppet governments. “Crash of 2054.” More rebellions in Europe. In North America, Quebec and northern California rebel. All US troops called home. Some units stationed in Europe refuse, either making common cause with local governments or remaining as independent military overlords.
  *          **2055:** US collapses into dozens of local governments. Revolutions spread in Europe. UPS peacekeeping forces dispatched to Hawaii, California, Seattle, Santiago, and other US Pacific coast cities, as well as along the Russian Asia coast become centers for re-establishing order.



The future stories I’m thinking of fall into six distinct periods: The Birth of the Earth Federation, Interplanetary Adventures, Interstellar Exploration, The Bug War, The War with the Empire of Jurai, and The Collapse of the Empire.

 **The Birth of the Earth Federation:** This covers the very near future, less than two decades, and has two stories: the marriage of ‘Yasuko’ to the Crown Prince, and the war with China and defeat of the Jade Emperor.

The first story would be titled _The Children of Martha_. The title comes from a stanza of the Rudyard Kipling poem in homage of engineers, _The Sons of Martha_ that would start the story:

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.  
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam’-well choose.  
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,  
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s days may be long in the land.

The story would center around Ranma and Akane’s relationship as Ranma makes final preparations for the wedding, the Senshi (except Ami) shutting down their civilian lives so that they can focus on training — individually, together, and in conjunction with ‘Yasuko’s’ new imperial regiment of Amazons and stranded Confederate soldiers — in the years leading up to the China War, and the Jade Emperor and Pluto’s Great Game. It has a cameo by Belldandy, when the rest of the gang meets her for the first (and perhaps the last) time.

The second story doesn’t have a title (or any beyond the first), but covers the China War. It opens with the first strike across what had been the border with North Korea before China annexed it, with Ranma and Yasuko desperately trying to get the children to the southern Korean coast and safety even as the Senshi fight against invasions of Vietnam and Japan itself. It then covers the creation of the United Pacific States (seed of the future Earth Federation) and taking the war to China and the Jade Emperor.

 **Interplanetary Adventures:** This period is a few decades longer than the first and slightly overlaps it, since Japan didn’t allow tense international relations then a desperate war with China to interfere with its first steps into space. It has three stories: Minako’s return to Venus, dealing with the Gray Men of Mars, and the war with the Overlord of Jupiter.

The first story has Minako returning to a Venus inhabited by the insectoid and reptilian descendants of the ‘demonic’ armies that had invaded as Beryl’s allies, and were stranded when the gates prematurely closed. She is there with Makoto and one of Ranma’s and Akane’s sons to investigate a zone where any airship entering vanishes without warning — a zone that seems to be roughly centered on the palace where she grew up in her previous life.

The second story deals with Mars. Mars was hit by three invading other-dimensional armies, the Gray Men (stretching the label ‘Men’, think the invading aliens of H. G. Wells’ _The War of the Worlds_ ), then Green Men (ERB’s Barsoom), and the White Apes (also Barsoom, only sentient and better organized with an empire of their own). All four races survived the Fall, but the terraforming of Mars hadn’t been complete and has been slowing reverting ever since, with only the massive canals the Red Men (human survivors, also think Burrough’s Barsoom, right down to genetically engineered to be oviparous) succeeded in digging before their technological base largely collapsed. The Gray Men live in underground cities, but had started to raid the Red Men cities after Japan established diplomatic and economic relations. Now, an alliance of Red Men city-states, Green Men tribes, and the UPS sets out to deal with the threat from below once and for all.

The third story has Ranma, Akane, and three of their children taking an extended ‘vacation’ masquerading as a tramp merchant family making a run to the asteroid belt in order to get the oldest of the three away from the court and hopefully salvage her. They didn’t expect to be boarded by pirates — and neither they nor the pirates expected to be in almost the direct path of the Overlord of Jupiter’s secret fleet as he tries to preserve his own ‘sandbox’ by devastating Earth and the UPS’s colonies on the Moon and Venus.

 **Interstellar Exploration:** Think Star Trek combined with Alien or Predator. When Beryl’s invading extra-dimensional armies were stranded, on some worlds they overwhelmed the human inhabitants. On some, the humans managed to defeat them. On yet others, neither managed to defeat the other. On _all_ the worlds, the infrastructure needed to maintain civilization was smashed, sometimes dooming the inhabitants when that infrastructure was needed to maintain life support or grow the crops needed to survive. And not all the invading armies were ‘humans in costumes’, some were truly alien. So in the centuries following a slowly uniting Earth’s return to interstellar space after four millennia, the explorers can never be sure what they will find in each new solar system — ruins on dead worlds, civilizations anywhere from Stone Age to Interplanetary, alien races from almost human to the bizarre, or _things_ that attack in the night or out of the shadows.

I’ve come up with one story for this era, of the first scout ship sent to another solar system and was the crew (including Ranma and Akane, disguised and along for the ride as journalists) find there — crystal towers that aren’t quite as devoid of life as they first appear. Think a combination of the nasties from Barbara Hambly’s Darwath trilogy and the Fuzzies from H. Beam Piper’s books on the same.

 **The Bug War:** It’s been several centuries since Earth moved into space. In that time much of what had been the planets of the Moon Queendom’s, colonies, allies and protectorates has been explored, and a loose alliance of starfaring planets has formed with a Senate for talking out differences (like a much-simplified UN) and a Patrol for combating piracy and looking after the smallest independent settlements. But the current system is coming apart under the strain of the question of how to handle colonies — and on the fringes of known space a new enemy is making itself known. The Bugs have found them.

For this setting, think Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_ and David Weber and Steve White’s _In Death Ground_ and _The Shiva Option_. For this story arc I’d generally use the timeline from Hero Games’ _Alien Wars_ RPG setting book but the Bugs from the _Starship Troopers_ RPG. The timeline covers around 75-100 years and ends with the defeat of the Bugs and the establishment of the Empire, with its capitol on what had been a depot world on the edge of Bug space, the survivors of the fleet that had put paid to the Bugs for a military, and Usagi for an empress.

I have only the beginning of one story figured for this one, with Akane and Ranma’s relationship having hit a _really_ rough spot. Akane’s on Earth pursuing an acting career, and Ranma is on the fringe with the children (human and nonhuman) and her lover — on the same planet that the Bugs hit first.

 **The War with the Empire of Jurai:** Another period centuries down the line. By the time the Empire of Jurai reaches the border of the Empire, the Empress Usagi’s realm is the largest star nation the Empire of Jurai had ever encountered in its millennia of existence. Even centuries earlier it would have still have consolidated whatever resources were necessary and then some and overwhelmed the Empire in one massive push. But Jurai, always hidebound technologically (a reaction to the destruction of the Moon Queendom and all its allies and many enemies by unknown technology), has been calcifying in other ways as well even as the infighting has been getting worse. The result is that no one can acquire the needed resources _and_ carry out the full assault while simultaneously guarding his or her back from bureaucratic backstabbing. Things get scary a few times, but Usagi manages to hold her empire together long enough for Ami to make the breakthrough that allows the Imperial fleets to outmaneuver the Juraian ones and mount deep raids that eventually push the Empire of Jurai to collapse. With the Empire safe from external enemies for a thousand years, Usagi hands the throne to one of her many children, and she, the Senshi, and the Queen Mother (as Ranma had long since come to be known) and her faithful companion all disappear from public knowledge.

I never developed any storylines for this, but when/if I did the first story would open with the following quote from one of my favorite SF series:

When it came to the subject of empires, Belisarius had distilled two simple pieces of wisdom:

First, every empire that ever existed or would exist always thought it was the end-all and be-all.

Second, none of them were. Few of them lasted more than two hundred years, and even the ones that did never went more than a couple of centuries without a civil war or other major internal conflict. The human race just naturally seemed to do better if it avoided too much in the way of political self-aggrandizement. The notion that history could be “guided” was pure nonsense. Better to just set up something workable, that contained as few conflicts as possible, and let human potential continue to unfold within it. If the underlying society was healthy, the political structure tended to sort itself out well enough to fit whatever the circumstances were.

  
— _Flames of Sunset_ by David Drake and Eric Flint

 **The Collapse of the Empire:** Another few centuries, and the fault-lines of an ever-expanding Empire are showing, the central elites growing untouchable and the fringe worlds growing more and more resentful. When an emperor that had planned to decentralize the power and authority of the Throne in order to bring government closer to the people (and keep it more manageable) is assassinated and replaced by one intending to keep things as they are with an expanded (and expensive) military to enforce the status quo, the fringes erupt in rebellion. Some core world would revolt, if they had a chance in hell of pulling it off, so they settle for subtle sabotage. The still-existent Youxia Order that Ranma founded splits over the question and goes to war with itself. And someone is hunting the hidden Senshi and their familes. This is the time for the lovers of Star Wars. This one ends in a few decades with the collapse of the Empire and the rise of the Federation.

I don’t have any stories for this one, either, but wanted to start the first story with a few stanzas from _Horatius_ , by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay:

Then none was for a party;  
    Then all were for the state;  
Then the great man helped the poor,  
    And the poor man loved the great:  
Then lands were fairly portioned;  
    Then spoils were fairly sold:  
The Romans were like brothers  
    In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman  
    More hateful than a foe,  
And the Tribunes beard the high,  
    And the Fathers grind the low.  
As we wax hot in faction,  
    In battle we wax cold:  
Wherefore men fight not as they fought  
    In the brave days of old.

* * *

 

  **Ranma’s New Style**

Ranma is Ranma, after all, so she never stops exploring the possibilities of her new style even when she has to devote time to learning court/diplomatic/social etiquette (something she _loathes_ , and those she meets in such settings sometimes come away with the impression that she isn’t taking the situation — and perhaps them — seriously) or acting out her “courtship” with the Crown Prince.

 **Ranged Attacks:** She never does figure out how to project emotion-clean ki as a ranged attack. She does, however, figure out how to combine Amaguriken-level speed with the Amazons’ no-space to throw things _really_ hard, _really_ fast. And a community effort comes up with a variety of things to be thrown, from knives, discs, and lead balls to flash-bangs and grenades. Like Green Arrow, she has one for every occasion. However, since Amaguriken speed requires muscle memory, she can’t switch load-outs without a period of practice to become accustomed to her new options.

 **Hand-to-Hand Combat:** The original Saotome branch of the Anything Goes School was focused on aerial empty hand combat and naturally emphasized dodging over parrying, leaving anything beyond the basics in parrying/blocking, power/strength and weapons to the Tendo branch.

However, there are problems with that when people are _shooting_ at you (as Ranma learned during the fight in Apocalypse Tokyo) or if you are protecting someone else. As well, being able to form a shield from ki increases the effectiveness of blocking and reduces risks. The shield can still be overpowered by a strong enough attack, though, and being able to sense incoming attacks makes dodging easier, so the new style emphasizes parrying/blocking and dodging equally.

The same ki used to create shields can be spread over the entire body. This will reduce the strength of the shield considerably, but adds to strength and reaction speed.

The sonar-like ability to sense ambient ki does not improve much beyond its basic function, except some extension in range, but essentially allows 360-degree ‘vision’ for shapes and movement, very useful when fighting against multiple attackers and with an ally.

Finally, the ability to form ki into any hand weapon desired mandates weapons training across a broad range, though more advanced students will have their own preferences.

 **Mental Abilities:** An immediate danger sense has already been mentioned but it is directional only, giving no hint of the nature of the threat. A highly advanced student of the Art can combine the danger sense with Amaguriken-speed to parry incoming ranged attacks, but that’s just showing off when a shield works just as well with less effort.

Future visions may occur in dreams or deep meditation, but the visions are unexplained and likely fragmentary — and will be quickly invalidated, possibly to the extent that the dreamer never does learn what they were about. They also will only cover events within the same environmental ki-field as the dreamer, such as the same planet or spaceship/starship/space station.

The ability to sense ki, and the emotions attached to it, doesn’t improve much beyond what Ranma has already developed (remember Ranma detecting Mu Tse on the roof of the opposite apartment building, in _First Blood_ ), though it mixes with the ‘sonar’ ability to read the emotions of people that are out of sight. A sufficiently skilled practitioner can learn to read something of someone’s character and recognize individuals. Lie detection is _not_ included, but sensing a target’s emotions combined with training in reading body language means everyone thinks it is, a reputation that members of the Order make full use of.

No mind reading, but there is long-distance communication. However, distance is determined in part by how strong the relationship is, and only sending is possible — meaning, only adepts have two-way communication. A semi-permanent mental link is possible (breakable by either partner), but only between two Order members that are _very_ close and the two have to be in the same environmental ki-field. A two-way link _is_ possible if there is some sort of physical connection even if only one is an adept, but a trance state is required.

And of course, the invisibility of the Umisenken is part of the new Art, though of varying strengths. Beginners can avoid notice by living things, but true invisibility is much more difficult.

 **Healing:** Healing without being in a trance state proves to be impossible, whether the adept is healing himself or someone else. Knowledge of anatomy doesn’t the speed or effectiveness of healing — the adept is actually providing the energy and ‘encouragement’ for the body to heal itself — but how mentally ‘intimate’ the adept is able to get with the patient does. So self-healing is fastest, then most likely family and the closest of friends, then acquaintances, strangers, and finally people the adept doesn’t trust. Personality also plays a part, a trusting innocent will have a much easier time than a paranoid loner.

One possibility Ranma recognized from the beginning, thanks to her study of the Moon Queendom’s Life Dancers, was effective immortality — an adept will age beyond full maturity only if he wishes to, and someone trained later in life will “de-age” until the peak of the physical human condition around the mid-twenties is reached. However, this is _not_ something that can be done for others. It would require constant physical contact, and so simply isn’t feasible.

 **Strengthening/Sticking:** This is the ability to infuse an object or living creature (including the adept’s own body) with ki to increase its durability, inspired by the technique Ryoga used to turn bandanas into lethal projectiles during his first duel with Ranma. For the adept himself it doesn’t work as well as a shield, not even the one covering the entire body, but it doesn’t _glow_. For other objects touch is required, but they don’t glow, either. The uses for this ability are limited only by the adept’s imagination, from turning a folded-up sheet of paper into a dagger to strengthening a door or window so it can’t be broken through to walking across a surface that normally wouldn’t support the adept’s weight.

The adept can also use this technique to bind himself to the object/creature, making it impossible to drop a weapon (though _not_ dropping a weapon could result in a broken wrist) or fall off a mount, crawl ( _not_ walk) up a wall or walk on a ceiling.

  **Ranma’s New Order**

Ranma’s initial response to her concerns about the lethality of her new techniques combined with how easy they are to learn (for her) is to treat them as a family Art, limited to her, Akane, her children, and close friends. It doesn’t take her too many years to learn what she should have known from her parents, that “family” doesn’t necessarily equate with “trustworthy,” children change over time, and the fact that she was the mother rather than the son didn’t change that. In spite of growing up with the philosophy Ranma evolved for her new Art, several children are marginal and one is very nearly a disaster before she’s straightened out.

After that, with the help of the Imperial Household Ranma shifts to looking for older teenagers of both sexes with the character needed to learn the Art without abusing it and offering them the opportunity to learn — teenagers, because younger children’s character isn’t necessarily fully developed or revealed yet and adults have trouble learning to detect ki. (Nodoka and Doug-sensei never do learn how, though Kasumi and Nabiki manage it.)

The fact that the help is coming from the Imperial Household combined with privacy concerns in Australia, Hawaii, and the other former US territories means that most of the new recruits are Japanese, but thanks to decades of war- and economics-inspired migration recruits found in Japan include Americans, Australians, Koreans, Vietnamese, and more. As members of the new Order spread out throughout the new federation, new members are more equitably spread out — especially in space, which has a higher percentage of Australians and Americans (both overjoyed to have their frontier back).

It turns out that Ranma wasn’t entirely correct about the amount of ki needed for her new style. Yes, the lifesword and ability to detect others’ presence and amotions doesn’t require much ki, but the effectiveness of many of the techniques she develops does. The result is that much of the training of beginners focuses on building up ki reserves as well as learning techniques. On Earth most of that training takes place at the Central Dojo, but off-planet it tends to be a matter of a single master with one or two apprentices.

The name for the new order, the Youxia, comes from Chinese history and literature of knight errants, wandering the land to help those in need. The new name comes from the war with China, when a Chinese soldier asks Ranma what she and Akane are, and Ranma pops off “youxia” on the spur of the moment. The soldier survives the encounter and reports it to his superiors, and from there it spreads through the Chinese army and from there to the allies. When Ranma gives up on the “Family Art” paradigm and shifts to “investigate and recruit” instead, she keeps the name for the reputation that goes with it.

The newly-trained youxia is expected to be self-supporting, though the Order will help pay for the upkeep of apprentices. Youxia can be found in many different careers, from bodyguards to scientists, doctors to actors, merchants to planetary first-in scouts, though they tend to focus on careers that allow for piece work and travel. They may become private detectives, but not often law enforcement and almost never military (though they will cooperate with the military as auxiliaries in peacetime — a youxia’s danger sense makes him a _fine_ helmsman for the Navy’s starships in combat).

**Disciplines of Faith**

As with many schools of Martial Arts, Ranma set out to develop a philosophy for the school she was creating and soon found herself falling in love with something she’d mostly missed growing up, the larger question of how one should live one’s life and why. But she ran into an issue — too many possibilities, with different answers from different people that worked ... for them. Eventually she decided that for the most part it wasn’t so much what the rules one came up with were but that one came up with them, based on experience and observation, firmly grounded in reality, and then lived by them — that it wasn’t so much the Answer one came up with but being willing to ask the Question that was important. Of course there were exceptions (#7 below was vital to keep the youxia an accepted part of society rather than a threat to be eliminated). Still, when Ranma codified the philosophy she’d developed over the decades into seven precepts during the creation of the more formal Order, the focus was on each apprentice’s development of a personal code rather than the end product — Anything Goes.

  1. **Knowledge over faith. Perception over belief:** Blind, untested faith is the root of all prejudices in the world—faith in religion, faith in country, faith in truths that bear no relation to reality. Those who had opened their minds to knowledge knew the power of questions, and the sadness of ignorance. That which cannot be known does not exist.
  2. **Power lies within ourselves:** Those who seek the divine need look no farther than themselves. Accept the power and responsibility for yourselves, your actions, and their consequences.
  3. **Change is the only constant:** Through change we grow, leaving behind the old and embracing the new.
  4. **Learning is the prime motivator for change:** Learning disciplines the mind, leaving it open to change. Without learning we become stale, wasted, static.
  5. **Without trial, complacency results:** Suffering is one of the prime motivations for change. Fear, starvation, disease, all cause us to seek answers and grow. Contentment breeds complacency. Decay is the result. Suffer, and be changed.
  6. **All perception is flawed. Truth is relative:** Your truth is not always my truth. Thus you must always seek the answers that are your own. By examining the works of others you can gain insights and ideas, but only through rigorous testing and cross-examination can real truths be found.
  7. **Knowledge and power is for the service of others, not one’s own self-aggrandizement:** History and experience shows that this is the rule that will bring satisfaction to your life, leaves behind something when you are gone, and allows you to live in peace with others.



(This comes from an old Steve Jackson Games RPG supplement, **_GURPS Religion_** , suitably modified to reflect Ranma’s emphasis on personal experience rather than the scientific method and acknowledging the personal control the lethal Art requires to be socially acceptable.)


End file.
